


One Going On Eternity And Counting

by leonidaslion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Dubious Consent, M/M, Rough Sex, Wincest - Freeform, one-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-10
Updated: 2011-04-10
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:59:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leonidaslion/pseuds/leonidaslion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some boundaries were never meant to be crossed ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamlittleyo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/gifts).



> The prompt was "liquor, sugar".

The first time Dean tells Sam no, Sam is seven. Sam cries and punches Dean in the stomach and shouts, “You’re mean, you never let me have anything, I hate you!” and the next morning he wakes up to find the coveted He-Man action figure waiting for him on the nightstand.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The second time, Sam is fourteen. They’re living in Blue Falls, Colorado, and there’s a month left of school. Sam’s middle school is having this huge graduation ceremony, and even though he only moved here four months ago, the school principal has asked him to give the graduation speech. When he comes home, bursting with energy and pride and eager to make the announcement, Dad isn’t there and Dean is packing their stuff.

Although Sam knows all too well what that means, he says, “Dean? What’s going on?”

“What’s it look like?”

“We can’t!” Sam protests. “We—we still have a month left of school.” As though that ever stopped Dad before.

“Yeah, well, this is more important,” Dean answers. He hasn’t paused in his packing: hasn’t even glanced at Sam. “Dad found this hunt in Kentucky, and—”

“One month!” Sam repeats. “It’s just one fucking—”

“Watch your mouth.”

“—month! Why can’t we wait until after?”

“Cause people are _dying_ ,” Dean snaps. His motions have grown sharp and jerky as he shoves clothing into open knapsacks, but Sam is too angry to heed the warning sign.

“I don’t want to go!”

“You think I do?” Dean shouts, finally turning to face him. He looks as pissed off as Sam feels and Sam suddenly remembers that the junior prom is in two weeks. Dean has been grinning like an idiot for days because he asked Cindy Whitmore— _she’s_ stacked, _Sammy_ —and she told him yes. His own rage eases.

“We could stay,” he tries. “Maybe we could—”

“It isn’t happening, Sam.” Dean’s voice is clipped as he turns back to packing: final.

“But Dad left us alone before, why can’t he—”

“There isn’t enough money, okay? Now stop being a little bitch and help me pack. Dad’ll be back in a few hours and we’re supposed to be ready.”

Sam stares at his brother’s back for a long moment, absorbing it. Dean doesn’t want to go either—he just admitted it—but he isn’t even going to bother fighting for it. Sam bets that the money thing is a load of crap: nothing more than a lie to placate him.

“You didn’t even ask, did you?” he says, clenching his hands into fists.

“We’re not staying,” Dean growls. “Now drop it already.” He tosses a balled-up shirt into one of the bags.

“He said ‘pack’ and you just said ‘yessir’, didn’t you? I bet you even saluted like a good little soldier.”

“Shut up before I shut you up, Sammy,” Dean threatens, starting toward him.

Sam jerks back out of reach. “I’m not going, you hear me? I’m staying right here and I’m gonna give the graduation speech like Principle Felton asked and you and Dad can just—you can just go fuck yourselves!”

A thrilled, shamed flush runs through him. He’s both stunned and appalled by his own defiance, but the look on Dean’s face, which goes from furious to sad and back again in about a second, makes his stomach clench unhappily.

Spinning around, he sprints down the hall and locks himself in the bathroom, where he slumps down with his back against the sink and bursts into tears. Dean kicks on the door a while, and shouts, and Sam thinks that his brother is probably gonna pick the lock and come in and beat the crap out of him for being a punk, but Dean doesn’t. After a while, Sam cries himself into a restless sleep, from which raised voices come to him like the far off pulse of drums.

“—important to him.”

“He’s tough. He’ll get over it.”

“Dad, please. It’s just a month!”

Beat of silence. Then, “You asking for him or for you?”

“What?”

“Because I already went over this with you.”

“I’m not—it isn’t about that, I just—he doesn’t want to go, and you don’t need him anyway. You don’t—you don’t need either of us.”

“Doesn’t matter. I don’t have the money to leave you two here and you know it.”

“I could—I could get a job. At the garage. I’m eighteen; no one would come looking for me.”

“You’re not dropping out of school.”

The first voice, which Sam’s drifting mind associates with noogies and freckles and a comforting, masculine smell, is softer when it comes again: almost inaudible with embarrassment.

“Dad, I’m not. I don’t. We both know that I’m no good at that stuff anyway. And it’s not like I’m gonna need it for anything.”

“No.”

“I was planning on it anyway, after this year. It’ll give me more time to…”

The voices fade out like a weak radio signal, and Sam sinks deeper.

His speech gets a standing ovation from his classmates, but Dean isn’t there. He couldn’t get off work.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The third time, Dean doesn’t actually say it out loud, but from his position on the floor where Dean dumped him after he kissed his brother and palmed Dean's cock through his pants, Sam hears him loud and clear.

That one, he doesn’t get a take back on.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Sam.”

It’s Sam’s last night here: his last night as a _Winchester_ because Dad told him that if he leaves he shouldn’t bother coming back. And he has to leave: that isn’t negotiable.

The few things Sam wants to take with him—clothing, a birthday card Dean made for him when Dean was ten and Sam was six, his knife—are sitting in a pile on the floor by the closet. It’s three thirty in the morning, according to the clock on the nightstand, and Sam doesn’t think Dad is home yet. He doesn’t think Dad’s going to be home for a few days.

“Sammy,” Dean says again. His voice is too thick: half-strangled by an emotion that Sam could name if he tried, but doesn’t want to.

Sam raises his head and locates his brother where he’s standing in the doorway. Although the hall beyond is shadow-shrouded and black, Sam has been lying in the dark long enough that he has no difficulty making out Dean’s face and the complete lack of expression there. His heart beats faster.

“What?” he asks, pushing up on his elbows. “Dean, what’s wrong?”

Dean takes a few steps into the room, hesitant, and then turns around and pushes the door shut. Sam’s stomach moves uneasily.

“Dean, talk to me, man. What’s—”

Dean turns back and draws his shirt off in one smooth motion and the rest of Sam’s question catches in his throat. He stares at his brother while Dean stands by the door holding his t-shirt up in front of his chest in an uncharacteristically shy gesture. Dean isn’t looking at Sam, his gaze down and a little to one side. His fingers work in the fabric of his shirt.

“Dean,” Sam manages, and then can’t get anything else out.

Dean shakes himself a little at the sound of his name and drops the shirt. When he comes toward the bed, he moves slowly enough that Sam has ample opportunity to get up, to halt him with a word, to do anything but lie there and stare. But Sam doesn’t and then Dean is getting on the bed.

He still won't look at Sam, not directly, and Sam puts a hand up belatedly to stop him. Any good intentions that he has dissolve at the feel of soft skin and twitching stomach muscles. He sweeps his hand up Dean’s side, hears Dean’s shaky breath, feels his brother’s pulse racing when his hand comes to rest over Dean’s heart.

“What are you doing?” Sam whispers, even as his other hand comes up and closes around Dean’s right hip. Dean has broad shoulders but he’s slender there: hipbones tapered and muscles sleek. Sam rubs his thumb over the fraying waistband of his brother’s sweatpants.

“What’s it look like?” Dean shoots back. Sam can tell that his brother is going for the cocky bravado he generally uses with women, but Dean’s voice quavers and gives him away. He edges his fingers beneath his brother’s sweats, feels the beginning curve of Dean’s ass, and his brother’s breathing goes ragged.

“What are you doing?” Sam asks again, his voice soft and a little sad because he already knows that he isn’t quite selfish enough to take what Dean is offering.

His brother licks his lips and the unconscious habit sends an even stronger bolt of desire through Sam than the feel of warm skin beneath his hands did. Dean looms over him, knees dimpling the bed on either side of Sam’s body, and Sam _wants_. It’s actually causing him physical pain to hold still.

“If I—” Dean starts, and then stops. After a few seconds, he whispers, “You can have this, Sam.”

 _If you stay._

The words fill the room, taking up all the space and pushing the air out, and for a few seconds Sam can’t breathe. He knew all along why Dean was here—part of him has been expecting this since Dean went so quiet after the apocalyptic fight with Dad—but now that it’s out there in the open it feels devastatingly, horribly true.

Dean loves him—maybe even needs him—but he doesn’t want him. Not in the right ways.

“I’m not leaving because of you, Dean.”

Dean makes a tiny, choked noise that Sam’s pretty sure he isn’t aware of. He stokes his hands across his brother’s skin one last time—lingering, storing up memories—and then takes them back.

“But I can’t stay because of you, either,” he says. “It wouldn’t be fair. To either of us.”

Dean swallows audibly. His eyes widen in a way that would be comical at any other time, and Sam can actually see the moment it hits Dean. What he’s doing here. What he’s offering.

He’s off the bed so fast that Sam feels the cool rush of air from his passage. Sam watches him move back to the door with his shoulders hunched and his head down. Dean looks like a bull: wounded and pissed off about it and on the verge of attacking.

“Come with me to the bus station in the morning?” Sam offers as his brother retrieves his shirt and pulled it back over his head. Hiding himself.

Dean hesitates with one hand on the doorknob and then pulls the door open. “I can’t,” he says, and then he’s gone.

That’s the fourth time.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The fifth time Dean says no, the world smells like cinders and there’s ash on Sam’s clothes, in his mouth, on Dean’s face.

“Dean, I have to see her. I have to—”

“No,” Dean says again, and pulls Sam against him and threads a hand in his hair and yanks Sam’s face down against the side of his neck. Sam fights him and it’s unclear in his own, confused mind when his struggles change and he’s pushing to get closer. His mouth opens and he bites down—taste of Dean stronger than the taste of ash and, even now, awakening a bitter ache in his groin. Dean grunts and his grip on Sam’s hair shifts, like he maybe wants to pull Sam off, but then Sam catches the too-familiar jingling noise of a gurney and Dean relents.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Sam holds his brother closer and runs his tongue over the skin between his teeth. Dean’s pulse skyrockets against his lips.

When Dean finally yanks Sam off four minutes later, there’s already a bruise on the side of his neck. The skin there is slick and glistens in the flashing lights.

The ambulance with Jess’ body in it drives away silent and dark, sight unseen, mission accomplished, and Dean puts a hand to his neck and winces.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They’re in California again for no number six: some little town almost across the border into Mexico whose name Sam never gets. Jess has been gone less than two months and her absence—or maybe Dean’s complicating presence—has left Sam rudderless. He drinks himself stupid in a bar where half the patrons speak a mongrel language halfway between English and Spanish and sings along to songs he doesn’t know the words to.

When Dean finally pulls him out into the parking lot to take him home, Sam spins around in his brother’s arms and kisses him. His lips are on Dean’s for all of a second when Dean jerks back, swearing.

“Don’t,” he says. “Sam, don’t you—”

Sam lurches in for another try and Dean turns his head, which works out well because Sam was actually aiming for his neck: for the place he can’t stop staring at, even now, a whole month after the mark has faded. His teeth scrape against skin—Dean’s pulse—and he gets in a quick, fierce bite before Dean shoves him off.

“Ow!” he hisses, one hand clapped to his throat. “Damn it, Sam!”

“You said I could,” Sam says, and the sober Sam buried deep inside of him is horrified by his own drunken persistence. For a moment, he thinks Dean is going to hit him. He thinks he would probably deserve it if Dean did.

But his brother only says, “Yeah, well, that was a limited time offer. Come on, let’s get you back to the room before you puke in my car.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean says ‘no’ a hundred times with his eyes on the way to Lawrence. He begs and pleads for Sam to let him off the hook, to tell him to turn the car around, to admit he was kidding about the whole psychic thing.

He never says anything aloud, though, so Sam figures it doesn’t count.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The seventh time means driving off and leaving Sam by the side of the road and almost being sacrificed to a demigod lame enough to possess a scarecrow, but Dean doesn’t relent. They’re not going to California to look for Dad, and that’s final.

Sam looks at his brother’s neck and wonders, after, whether it was California Dean wanted to avoid.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In a motel room just within the Nebraska state line, no becomes yes.

Dean’s heart is failing—he’s dying—and tomorrow is going to determine whether Sam will have to bury two loves in one year. He doesn’t expect to get any sleep, but he’s exhausted from days of research and is out almost as soon as his head hits the pillow. When he wakes, later, the room is still dark and Dean is climbing into bed with him.

Sam’s still exhausted enough that he’s caught up in a flashback for a few moments. He’s eighteen again, and angry and hurting and confused, and Dean is begging him to stay. By the time he flounders back to the present, Dean is already under the sheet and pressed up against him.

“Dean, what—”

“Shh,” Dean says, and leans in.

At the first brush of his brother’s lips against his own, Sam jerks back sharply enough that his neck muscles cry out in protest and blurts, “What the fuck, man?”

Dean looks like crap in the dim room—dark smudges underneath his eyes, skin pale and lips chapped—but he’s still beautiful. Beautiful and reaching a hand down to cup Sam’s cock through his sweats and completely out of his fucking mind.

“Dean, _stop_.”

“No,” Dean says, palming at Sam’s cock in a way that has it filling with a painful rush. Sam grabs his brother’s wrist and tries to pull Dean’s hand away. Dean fights him on it until Sam, cursing, pushes down instead, hard enough to still his brother’s explorations. The unrelenting pressure against his cock makes it difficult to think, but he doesn’t want to get into a wrestling match with Dean right now, not when a rush of adrenaline could kill him. Speaking of which …

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hisses.

Dean won’t meet his gaze, eyes lowered and fixed on the place beneath the sheet where their hands are. His jaw twitches.

“Putting aside the fact that you don’t want this, you’re hurt. Jesus Christ, Dean, your _heart_ —”

“I want this,” Dean says, and _looks_ at him, and Sam is derailed completely because the expression on Dean’s face—earnest and frightened and desperate—says it’s true.

“You,” he says. “But you—all this time, you—”

“Because it’s wrong,” Dean says, still holding his eyes. “And I didn’t want to fuck you up like that, but I’m dying and I want this and a man’s entitled to a last request.”

Sam’s chest aches like he’s the one with the failing heart and his vision blurs. “You don’t get a last request because you’re not dying,” he bites out. “This is going to work.”

It _is_. It _has_ to.

But he can tell from the bleak humor in Dean’s eyes that his brother doesn’t believe him.

“I’m asking, Sam,” Dean murmurs, and flexes his hand where it’s pressed down on Sam’s cock. Sam’s hips twitch up without his permission. He doesn’t know who he’s more pissed at: Dean for waiting until now to spring this on him, or himself for wanting to take Dean up on it and consequences be damned.

“Sex could kill you,” he insists.

“It won’t,” Dean answers, and moves his hand again in a way that makes Sam realize that his hold on his brother’s wrist has gone slack. “We’ll go slow, and I’ll tell you if anything feels wrong.” His lips lift in a wry smile. “Well, worse than normal, anyway.”

“Dean,” Sam says. It’s supposed to be a protest, but it sounds more like surrender.

 _Stupid,_ he tells himself. _God, this is so fucking stupid and if you go through with it, you’re gonna finish tonight at the hospital if you’re lucky. The morgue if you aren’t._

But then Dean leans in again and this time Sam opens for him. The kiss falters, as though Dean wasn’t expecting Sam’s sudden capitulation, and then steadies. Dean dips inside Sam’s mouth with teasing slowness, finding Sam’s tongue with his own and coaxing him into action. Dean’s talented mouth draws Sam forward until he’s the one leading: until he’s pushing up and over so that Dean can lie down on his back.

Concern still nips at Sam when he finally breaks the kiss, but it’s distant. He trusts his brother to know his own limits, and if Dean says this is going to be fine, then it will be.

Dean’s hand isn’t cupping his cock anymore. Instead, it’s resting lightly on Sam’s upturned hip. His grip is tenuous and uncertain, like he isn’t sure that he’s allowed to touch, and when Sam sweeps his gaze across his brother’s face, Dean looks nervous.

Although he’s pretty sure he already knows the answer, Sam asks, “Have you ever—?”

Sure enough, Dean flushes.

“That’s okay,” Sam promises, laying a gentle kiss on his brother’s cheek. “I’ll make it good.”

He expects some kind of quip, but Dean is anxious enough that he only nods and says, “Okay. How do you—how do you want me?”

The simplest—and safest—thing would be to limit themselves to hand jobs, but Dean is asking for more than that, and he’ll be pissed if Sam tries to ‘baby’ him. Besides, this might _(it won’t, I’ll save him)_ be their only chance to do anything. Sam thinks about getting Dean up on his hands and knees for all of two seconds before abandoning the idea. That might be the easiest position for someone’s first time, but Dean isn’t strong enough to manage it.

After considering several other possibilities, Sam finally says, “Roll over on your side.”

Dean complies without arguing, although he doesn’t quite move quickly enough to hide the twitch of relief on his face. Sam wonders whether his brother actually thought he was going to make him do something strenuous, or if he was maybe worried that Sam didn’t know what he was doing either, and then gets distracted by the fact that Dean’s bare shoulder is now at the same level as his mouth. Kissing the sweeping curve of bone and muscle, he pulls down the sheets to see if he needs to strip his brother further.

Turns out he doesn’t, and at the sight of all that bare skin, Sam can’t resist sliding his hand down Dean’s side and onto his hip. Dean shifts at the caress.

“Ticklish?” Sam asks, nuzzling at his brother’s neck.

He expects a ‘fuck you’, but instead Dean stutters, “Y-yes,” in an odd, breathy voice.

“Your heart okay?” Sam asks, frowning.

“Fine,” Dean answers immediately, and his voice sounds steadier. “Just. This is. Kinda intense.”

They haven’t done anything yet, not really, but Sam knows what Dean means.

“Yeah,” he sighs. He curls his fingers forward around Dean’s hip, wanting to feel the hard, heavy weight of his brother against his hand, and Dean’s breath hitches.

“Please, Sam,” he says, halting Sam’s exploration. “Can we—I want you to fuck me, and I’m not going t-to last.”

 _Fuck,_ Sam thinks, and has to release Dean in order to grab himself through his sweats. He’s been waiting to hear those words from his brother for years, has been waiting for Dean to want him back, and now that it’s finally happening, it’s even hotter than he ever imagined.

“Lube,” he pants when he can talk again. “We need lube.” Condoms too, probably, considering Dean’s past, but Sam doesn’t care, and he isn’t going to use one unless Dean asks.

“H-here,” Dean says. He reaches a trembling arm over to the nightstand and then holds the small tube over his shoulder without turning around.

It’s a brand new tube, which means that Dean planned this—probably bought it _(or maybe just swiped it)_ on his way to the motel from the hospital—and Sam’s chest swells with some nameless, immense emotion.

“I love you,” he whispers, and kisses Dean’s shoulder again. What he really wants is his brother’s mouth, but they’re at the wrong angle for that, and he isn’t going to ask Dean to twist himself into uncomfortable shapes when he’s this hurt.

“Love you too,” Dean sighs, soft and genuine. Then, predictably, he ruins the moment by adding, “Now shove your dick in my ass already.”

Sam can’t find it in himself to be annoyed: he’s too relieved to catch a glimpse of the brother he knows so well in the midst of all this strangeness. Uncapping the tube, he squirts a generous amount on his fingers.

“Roll forward a little more on your stomach and bring your right leg up.”

“This good?” Dean asks.

Sam can’t answer because Dean is obeying him—no question, no hesitation—and now Sam can see the place his cock is going to go. He stares at the tiny indentation for a few moments and then pulls his focus back so that he can see the whole picture and stares at that as well. He stares at his brother, spread out alongside him and impossibly beautiful as he displays himself for Sam. Dean’s muscles are tense and twitching: he looks deceptively strong. Looks healthy.

“Sam?” Dean prods, his voice thready with nerves. He jumps when Sam touches his hip with lube-slick fingers.

“Shh,” Sam soothes, trailing his fingers down to the small of Dean’s back and leaving a mesmerizing sheen in their wake. “Gonna finger you slow: make you nice and open for me so I can slide right in.”

He doesn’t know what’s come over him. He never talked like this with Jess or any of the other people he’s been with. But this is Dean— _finally_ —and that seems to be making all the difference.

Dean seems to appreciate the words, at least, because he shivers and chokes out, “ _Jesus_.”

Sam permits himself a smirk and traces his fingers down between Dean’s cheeks until he’s touching that small, puckered indentation. He can only see a tiny sliver of Dean’s face—can’t make out his brother’s expression at all—and he desperately wishes he could.

“When you’re better,” he whispers. “We’re going to do this face to face so I can see you.”

He pushes his finger inside and Dean’s entire body jerks. Dean’s breath is coming far too fast and shallow for Sam’s peace of mind and he stops. Putting his free hand on his brother’s thigh, he rubs small circles into his skin.

“You okay?”

“F-fine,” Dean grinds out in a weak, but nevertheless stubborn, voice. “Keep going.”

Hesitantly, Sam eases his finger deeper until Dean’s body is gripping him up to the second knuckle. Then, just as carefully, he pulls it back out. With a muffled grunt of effort, Dean hitches his raised leg even closer to his chest, giving Sam more room to work.

Sam watches his brother’s muscles bunch and flex for a few more slow works of his finger and then starts, “You’ll tell me if your heart—”

“Yes,” Dean bites out. Although his body is still tense, he’s starting to loosen a little inside. “S-said I w-would.”

Sam doesn’t ask again. He doesn’t say anything, actually: too enthralled by how compliant his brother’s body is to his demands. Dean takes two fingers, and then three, and Sam has to remind himself that the goal is to keep this as adrenaline-free as possible to keep from trying for four _(or five)_ , although that’s definitely on the list for later.

When Dean is nice and loose and glistening even in the shadowed room, Sam pulls his fingers free. Dean hisses, hips rolling, and Sam almost tears his sweats in his haste to get them off. Tossing the fabric, damp with both sweat and precome, onto the floor, he pours the rest of the lube over his cock and gives himself a few quick jerks. Then he curls close along his brother’s back and slides his leg up and over Dean’s, getting into position.

“Tell me again,” he begs, nipping the nape of his brother’s neck. “Tell me you want this.”

Dean’s quiet for a few seconds and then he rasps, “I want this.”

Sam squirms a hand between them and lines his cock up. “Relax,” he breathes, and then starts to push in.

It can’t be painless. Sam did the best he could, and he used enough lube that his cock keeps slipping in the circle of his fingers, but Dean is still amazingly tight. Sam pauses halfway in, stroking his brother’s hip and waiting for him to adjust to the intrusion.

 _Just me,_ he thinks, dazed. _I’m the first. The only._ The thought makes his pulse speed even further and his heart beats out a frantic tattoo against Dean’s back. Digging his fingers into his brother’s skin, he strains to force himself deeper.

Dean lets out a grunt and his hips start to edge forward, away from Sam. Without thinking—he left rational thought behind right around the time he woke up with his naked brother in his bed—Sam tightens his grip and holds Dean still.

“Sam.” Dean’s voice is wrecked: desperate.

“Shh, baby,” Sam murmurs. “Almost there. Almost …”

He pushes forward again and slots in with an abruptness that makes Dean’s body shudder.

“Fuck!” Dean blurts. His whole body is a line of tension, but he doesn’t try to move away.

In between dragging in shocked gulps of air—God, Dean is so warm inside, and tight, and _perfect_ —Sam somehow manages to gasp out, “You okay?”

Dean is silent long enough that the sharp, almost too intense pleasure begins to ebb before a rising wave of concern.

“Dean?” Sam tries again, steeling himself to pull out if Dean needs him to.

This time, though, Dean answers, “Dude, Mister Ed called. He wants his cock back.”

The uneasy tension evaporates as Sam laughs and bites his brother’s shoulder. “You love it. Jerk.”

“Bitey bitch,” Dean responds and then hisses as Sam starts to move.

“Too fast?” Sam asks, stilling.

“No. No, I just—wasn’t expecting it. Go ahead.”

Despite the reassurance, Sam’s first slides are as gentle as he can make them. He manages to remain a gentleman for all of a minute before his brain checks out and his body takes over, speeding his thrusts.

It’s an amazing sensation, the feel of his brother’s body giving way before him: submitting to him. And though Sam doesn’t think he’s moving at the right angle for Dean’s prostate, Dean seems to be enjoying it as well because he keeps pumping his hips back in an attempt to take Sam deeper. The slap of their bodies colliding is overly loud in the dark room: Sam can’t get enough air to talk, and Dean is mostly silent as their pace speeds. It’s odd: Sam always figured that his brother would be noisy in bed, but the only sounds that Dean makes are soft, punched grunts.

Hungry for his brother’s voice, Sam buries his face against the side of Dean’s neck and bites down. Dean’s grunts crescendo into a pained groan, and he sobs out, “ _Sam_ ,” and then Sam is coming in hard, blinding spurts. His hand tightens on Dean’s hip, yanking him even closer, and he shoves in one last time, deep, before collapsing onto the bed.

“Holy fuck,” he pants as soon as he can make his voice work.

Dean doesn’t respond, but Sam can feel him breathing, so that’s all good. He eases himself out carefully, his softening cock slick and warm in his hand, and then lightly brushes his fingers over Dean’s gaping, reddened hole.

Dean shifts forward like that light touch hurt. As raw as his ass looks, it probably did. “Dude,” he mutters, protesting.

Sam flushes. “Sorry.”

After lying there quietly for a moment, he realizes with a pang of guilt that he never bothered with a reach around. He really doesn’t know what the hell came over him: he’s normally very considerate in bed. But he was so damned ravenous for his brother that the thought never even crossed his mind.

“Sorry,” he says again, leaning up on one elbow and reaching around his brother’s body. “I can—huh.” He shifts his fingers and Dean’s cock—flaccid—slips in his grip. “You already came?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, and then pushes Sam’s hand off of him and slowly climbs out of the bed. His head is averted, eyes down, but Sam doesn’t need to see his face to see the blush painting his entire body.

“No need to be embarrassed,” he says lightly as he slides free of the sheets himself and gets up to help Dean wherever he’s going—the bathroom probably. “I’m just that good.”

Dean utters this small, disbelieving laugh and glances at Sam as Sam slides an arm around his waist. He _does_ look embarrassed, and awkward, and a little sad. Sam’s afterglow slips and he brushes his free hand through his brother’s hair. Shutting his eyes, Dean swallows and leans into the touch.

“You’re not dying,” Sam tells him again, and steals a kiss. “Promise.”


	2. Chapter 2

A man dies for Dean in Nebraska and Dean won’t forgive Sam for it. He turns his face away when Sam tries to kiss him, and shies back from Sam’s touches, and actually asks for two rooms when they check into motels.

“Dean,” Sam starts after he’s put up with it for a week.

Dean just looks at him, but Sam can read the ‘don’t’ in his brother’s eyes, so he shuts up.

And that makes eight.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In Long Ridge, Arizona, the world implodes.

Sam’s supposed to meet his brother at the local coffee shop. He gets there first, as usual, and heads inside to get a coffee while he waits. While he’s at the counter ordering, he notices that they have sticky buns—his brother’s favorite when they were kids—and on impulse buys one for Dean as a peace offering. Then he goes outside to one of the large, wrought iron tables and sits down to wait.

Dean shows up five minutes later with a stack of newspapers underneath one arm and greets him with a casual nod.

“Hey,” he says. His eyes light up when they hit on the sticky bun sitting in front of the empty seat to Sam’s right. “That for me?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, smiling because he hasn’t seen Dean looking so relaxed since before Nebraska. Maybe things are finally mending a bit.

“Sweet!” Dean exclaims, and drops the papers on the table so he can pick up the bun. He devours half of it in one bite and then lets out a low moan that makes Sam’s gut tighten. Dean’s too focused on the food to notice. Licking his lips, he stares at the rest of the bun like it’s a wet dream come true and says, “Dude, this is awesome. I think there’s more sugar in here than bread.”

Then he walks around the table and drops down into a chair on the other side.

Sam stares at his brother while suspicion creeps across his skin, and after a moment Dean looks back.

“What?”

Just like that, Sam _knows_.

The world tips sideways on him and he jerks in his chair. Dean’s eyebrows rise and he gives Sam a look like he thinks Sam is the world’s biggest spaz: like Sam’s ribcage hasn’t just become five sizes too small.

“Oh my god,” Sam blurts, and has to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from throwing up.

Dean is at his side in a second, amusement gone. For the first time in over a month, his hand is on Sam’s arm. “Sam?” he says. “Sam, what’s wrong?”

“What’s _wrong_?” Sam repeats. He knows he sounds hysterical but he can’t help it. He _is_ hysterical. Shock will do things like that.

Dean’s eyes are darting around and after a moment Sam realizes that his brother is looking for whatever’s doing this. Like Sam’s flipping out because something put the whammy on him.

“Jesus Christ, Dean,” Sam says, drawing his brother’s attention back. His voice sounds like it’s coming from very far away.

“Sam, _what_?” Dean snaps. He sounds angry but his eyes are wide: panicked. And Sam understands suddenly why he was so relieved to be told to turn over on his side.

He didn’t want his eyes giving him away.

Sam’s head pulses and his vision films over with white for a second. His stomach tries to crawl out of his mouth again and he swallows it with a pained gurgle.

“That’s it, we’re getting out of here,” Dean says. “Come on.”

He starts to lift Sam from the chair and Sam fists his hand in his brother’s shirt, halting him. “Did you—” he says, and then laughs. “God, Dean, were you even hard?”

Dean freezes. His face is very, very still, but his eyes are horrified. His breath comes shallow and fast, like he’s been fighting.

He doesn’t say no.

He doesn’t have to.

Sam laughs again, remembering how he assumed that the slick feel of Dean’s cock was from his brother’s semen. But his hand was wet before he reached, wasn’t it? Slippery with the lube and come from his own cock.

Dean stands there frozen, caught out, and Sam can’t stop laughing. He laughs and he laughs and he laughs until he bends forward, opens his mouth wide, and throws up all over both of them.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Why?” Sam asks later.

Although their next scheduled laundry day isn’t for another week, they’re sitting in a Washerama watching the driers turn. Dean didn’t want the vomit smell getting in the Impala and Sam wasn’t really in any condition to argue. They’re sitting side by side, and Dean is a long line of heat against his body. Sam _wants_ , and it makes his stomach turn, but he doesn’t move away.

If he moves away, he might have to look at Dean and he can’t handle that right now.

“Why did you do it?” he asks again after almost a minute of waiting.

He doesn’t think Dean’s going to answer this time either, but Dean sighs and says, “I was dying. You wanted it. And I—I wanted you to have something good. To remember. You know, about me.” Dean falls silent again and then lets out a hollow chuckle. “I was supposed to die,” he says, and it sounds like an apology.

The driers click onto cool down.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Sam says.

Dean sighs again. “Yeah.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean doesn’t tell Sam no anymore because Sam doesn’t ask.

They move around each other with painful awkwardness: not working cases, just drifting. Sam spends the endless, cramped hours in the Impala going over his memories of that night in his head and wondering how he could have missed it.

‘I want this’, Dean said, and Sam believed him. Sam believed his brother because what he was actually saying—what he _meant_ —was ‘I want _to give you_ this,’ and for Dean there isn’t a whole lot of space between the two. It was a good lie for that reason, twisted round on itself and threaded through with truth, and sometimes Sam can’t blame himself for what happened. Hell, by the time anything _was_ happening—by the time Sam was touching Dean in a manner that was bound to strip that coating of truth away—his brother was already on his side: lie told and bought, and eyes hidden.

Sam thinks about the deliberateness of the lie—about the fact that Dean fucking _played_ him—and the vastness of his sickened rage takes him by surprise. Dean's aware that he can’t lie with his eyes, and he knows that Sam is familiar with that weakness as well, and he planned accordingly. He crafted a line that he could offer with just enough honesty to keep the falsehood beneath from showing through, and then he met Sam's gaze head on and fed it to him.

Dean may have fed the lie to him, but Sam ate it, and sometimes he jerks awake from a restless sleep, dreams he can’t quite remember _(or maybe just doesn’t want to)_ leaving his mouth dry and his cock hard in his sweats, and he’ll barely make it into the bathroom before puking.

As fucked up as everything is, they aren’t bothering with two rooms anymore, so he knows that Dean hears him. Dean hears him every time, he _must_ , but he never says anything. Dean sleeps in boxers and nothing else and wanders around after his shower with a towel wrapped around his waist. He pretends that everything is normal, the way it hasn’t been since Sam first tried to kiss his brother at the age of sixteen.

Sam can’t decide whether Dean’s behavior is meant as a shield or a goad, but either way it’s infuriating as hell.

In a gas station parking lot in Oklahoma, his fury finally bubbles up beyond his control and he takes a swing at his brother. Dean doesn’t even hesitate before swinging back. After the first few punches, they both forget everything Dad taught them, and the fight disintegrates into a brawl.

By the time they come out of it, they’re both bruised and bleeding and Dean has a dislocated pinky. They sit next to each other on the curb, sharing a bag of ice between them and staring off into the distance. Sam’s body feels like shit, but his insides seem to have fallen back into the right place.

“If you _ever_ do that again,” he says.

“I won’t,” Dean answers.

Sam’s throat closes up and he realizes that he’s perilously close to crying. “God, Dean, I’m so sorry.”

“Sam?”

Sniffing, Sam glances over and finds Dean studying his pinky. “Yeah?”

“You’re breaking the first rule of fight club,” Dean tells him. There’s a hint of a smile around his mouth.

Sam laughs and for the first time in what feels like years it comes out sounding right.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Coming so soon on the heels of that fight, when everything between them is still raw and uncertain, Cassie is an unfair knife to the gut. Sam knows that he has no right to feel jealous—even if he had some kind of claim on Dean _(which he doesn’t)_ , he himself had Jess during those lost years—but it doesn’t stop that green, burning anger from seething in his stomach.

The worst part is the way that Dean looks at her, sometimes, when he doesn’t think anyone’s watching: tender and longing and fond. He’s never looked at Sam like that, not once, and it leaves Sam wondering for the hundredth time how he ever could have believed Dean’s lie, no matter how well crafted it was.

He asks his brother, after, when Cassie is nothing but a speck in the rearview mirror, if he thinks that this life is worth the costs. He’s brave enough to ask then because Dean has already made his decision: has already chosen Sam and their fucked up nothing over what he could have had with Cassie.

Dean doesn’t say no, but he doesn’t say yes either. He doesn’t answer the question at all, actually: just slouches back in his seat and goes to sleep with a muttered reminder to wake him up when it’s his turn to drive.

But he’s smiling when he says it—not hungry and deep, like the smiles he offered Cassie after the two of them made up, but warm and genuine all the same—and maybe that’s answer enough.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean tells Sam no for the ninth, tenth, and eleventh times in Michigan. After the third ‘no’ in an hour, he loses his temper and snaps, “If you don’t stop asking, I swear to God I will pull over and _beat_ some fucking sense into you.”

Sam closes his mouth and thinks of Mom, and of Jessica, and of Max, and knows that Dean’s lying to him.

His brother is scared shitless.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In Minnesota, Sam gets kidnapped by a family of psychopaths and Dean gets a poker to the shoulder trying to rescue him. Later, with Dean sprawled on his back on the bed, shirtless and high as a kite from the two vicodin he popped dry, Sam tends to the burn. Dean’s skin is flushed beneath his fingers and although Sam knows it’s a warning sign of infection, all he can think about is how warm his brother is, and how soft.

“’ammy,” Dean slurs, trying to focus on him and failing.

 _Tell me yes,_ Sam thinks. _Tell me yes and mean it._

But what he says is, “I’m right here, man. I’ve got you.”

Dean gets a hand on Sam’s wrist and fumbles around for a grip. “Sammy,” he says more clearly, although Sam can tell he’s already more than half asleep.

“Shh,” he says, and puts Dean’s hand back on his own stomach. “Go to sleep, okay?”

“M’kay,” Dean agrees, ever obedient. “Love you, Sammy.”

“No, you don’t,” Sam whispers, aching, but his brother is already out and doesn’t hear him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In Chicago, Sam takes the opportunity to finally broach the topic of Tomorrow.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Dean says.

“I want us to be together again,” he says. “I want us to be a family again.”

Sam looks into his brother’s eyes and sees shadows. He hears low, pained grunts and tastes salted skin in his mouth. “Things will never be the way they were before,” he answers, and hates himself for it. He hates himself for putting that pathetic, hurt expression on Dean’s face.

“Could be,” Dean tries.

Sam thinks of having this forever: him and Dean and, one day, Dad, and the open road. He thinks of waking up to Dean singing in the bathroom, and of early morning jogs by his brother’s side, and of late night bar runs. He thinks of having what he wants most in the entire world constantly sitting within arm’s reach and being unable to touch: to take.

“I don’t want them to be,” he chokes out, and sees the instant Dean remembers by the way his eyes go deer-startled.

God, how could he have forgotten? How can this thing that’s carving Sam into bloody strips from the inside out be so insignificant to him?

Sam can see the questions trembling on his brother’s lips— _is this because of Nebraska? Would you stay, if we hadn’t?_ —and prays that Dean doesn’t ask.

He’s too afraid of what his answer would be.

Later, outside in the alley with Winchester blood dripping down from all three of them to stain the asphalt, Sam claps a hand on his father’s shoulder and thinks, _I fucked him, you know that? He’s your good soldier and I fucked him anyway, and he let me, and it’s your fault that I’m like this. It’s your fault Dean’s like this, your fault he’s willing to bend himself in two to make us happy, and I hate you. I fucking hate you._

But he doesn’t know whether he hates John for fucking him up, or for not fucking Dean up quite enough, or maybe just not in the right way, and in the end he forces his hand to open and steps back. He lets his father go with words unsaid.

He sits in the Impala next to Dean and watches John pull away, and after a moment Dean glances over at him. Sam doesn’t think Dean’s aware of it, but his eyes are begging.

 _Stay. Please, Sammy. Don’t ever make me watch you leave like that._

Sam feels the noose around his neck knotting tighter, but he holds Dean’s eyes anyway, and does his best to telegraph back, _I’m here, I’m not leaving, not ever._

Dean relaxes minutely and turns away to start the car.

Sam watches the streetlights play over his brother’s savaged face, and understands that Dean is never going to push him away, no matter how hot his sick desire burns. He understands that Dean is never going to say no when it counts, and a selfish, bitter joy twists in his stomach.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam gets his twelfth no when he accidentally kisses Dean a month later in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

He doesn’t intend to: he knows that much as he’s striding after his brother. He just wants to get his hands on Dean so that he can make him hold still long enough to listen to a few choice phrases of about the kind of father who leaves his ten year old kid to watch his brother for days on end. But then he actually has his hands on Dean, and Dean turns, startled, and there are tears in his eyes, and Sam kisses him. He doesn’t actually realize he’s doing it until Dean is already pushing him away, hard and angry.

“What the fuck?” Dean spits, scrubbing a hand across his mouth.

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Damn it, Sam, I thought—I thought we were past this.” His vehemence is already fading, and he looks more bewildered and hurt than angry. He touches his lips again, lightly, like he’s checking for cuts.

“I didn’t mean to,” Sam says softly. God, he hates himself for putting that defeated, awkward slump in his brother’s shoulders, like Dean doesn’t know what to do with himself.

“Is that,” Dean starts, and then stops. After taking a few seconds to marshal himself, he asks, “Would that make you happy? You want me to just. You know?”

Sam’s balls try to crawl up inside of him in horror. “No,” he manages.

Shutting his eyes, Dean nods. When he opens them again, he looks more like himself. “Then stop,” he says. “I mean it, Sam. Next time I’m gonna come up swinging.”

Later, when Michael asks if Dean would do anything for his little brother, Dean says, simple and honest, “Yeah, I would.”

Sam doesn’t know whether he wants to cry or throw up.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dad’s back for an encore appearance when Dean says no again, and for once Sam isn’t on the receiving end. The look on John’s face is almost enough to outweigh the fact that he won’t have Dean to himself any longer.

Almost.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam loses count of how many times Dean begs the demon—begs their father—to stop. He loses count of the frantic beats his heart makes while he speeds toward the hospital with Dean slumped in the back, lips bloodied and body broken. He loses count of the prayers he sends up to a God he knows has turned from him while he sits next to his brother’s hospital bed, close enough to feel the warmth of Dean’s skin but not quite daring to touch.

But he knows clearly how many family members he loses as a result of that confrontation with Yellow Eyes because the answer is only one, the answer is Dad, and in the split second when he understands what must have happened, Sam’s gut response isn’t horror, but relief.

When it comes down to a choice between Dad and Dean, there isn’t really a choice at all.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The ashes of their father’s pyre aren’t even cold yet and Dean’s already drunk. They’ve been sitting around Bobby’s kitchen table for hours, and Sam isn’t exactly sober either, but Dean seems determined to drink himself unconscious, or possibly right back into the hospital. If Bobby were here, he’d have cut Dean off about four shots ago, but Bobby isn’t here. Bobby’s staying with a friend tonight: giving the two of them privacy to mourn.

Dean lurches forward and grabs the bottle of tequila that they’ve been sharing. This time he bypasses the shot glass completely, tossing back a mouthful of the alcohol like it’s water. Sam’s own throat burns in sympathy and he makes an executive decision to stop this before it goes any further than it already has. Pushing to his feet, he comes around the table and makes a grab for the bottle. Dean’s grip is loose enough that Sam takes the tequila away from him easily; he probably would have upended the rest all over himself in another minute or so.

Dean blinks at his empty hand, frowns, and then squints at Sam. “Hey!” he protests, reaching after his precious alcohol. “Thas mine.”

“You’re cut off,” Sam answers shortly.

“Fuck you, Sammy, you’re not Dad.” Dean means the words as weapons, but Sam’s just drunk enough not to care. He makes his way over to Bobby’s sink and upends the bottle. No more alcohol, no return trips to the ER.

Dean makes an incredulous noise and then there’s the scrape of chair on linoleum. Sam braces himself for the attack he knows is coming and manages not to have the wind knocked out of him when Dean crashes into him from behind.

“Gimme!” Dean growls, reaching around Sam for the bottle while keeping him pinned with his weight. He’s clumsy with the liquor, but even so he almost has his fingers on the tequila again when Sam sees the last of the amber liquid drain out. He drops the bottle with a rush of relief, not caring that it breaks when it hits the sink. He needs Dean off of him _now_ , before he has a completely inappropriate reaction to the feel of his brother pressed up against him. Dean will retreat now that there’s nothing for him to grab.

But Dean doesn’t retreat. The tequila is irrevocably gone and, for some reason, he’s still straining against Sam.

It takes Sam’s grief-numbed mind a few moments to realize that his brother is thrusting against him. One of Dean’s hands is gripping the sink edge and the other is twisted in the back of Sam’s shirt. His forehead is a sweaty, hot weight on Sam’s shoulder.

“Dean,” Sam rasps, trying to ignore his own stiffening cock.

“Shut up,” Dean pants. “Shut up, shut up.” He grinds down harder, shoving Sam’s crotch into the sink rim and driving a moan from his throat.

“Not,” Sam manages. “Not what you want. Dean. Dean, hold on a sec.”

Dean lets out an inarticulate, enraged noise and pulls back long enough to yank Sam around. Then he shoves forward again, getting a thigh up against Sam’s obvious erection and rutting his own half-hard cock against Sam’s hip. Sam wants to take his brother’s burgeoning erection as some kind of sign, but he knows that it’s nothing more than a natural response to friction.

“C’mon,” Dean growls. “You want this, I know you do.” Still thrusting, he reaches between them and fumbles at Sam’s zipper. “C’mon and fucking take it, you goddamn pussy.”

Sam’s zipper is too tricky for Dean to manage in his current state, so he gives up on it and pulls his own shirt off instead. The pressure of his body lifts for half a second and then drops down again, harder than ever. The collision drives Sam off-balance and forces him to grab hold of Dean in order to keep from ending up on the floor. His brother’s skin is slick underneath his hands and feels so fucking good that he finds his grasp wandering without his permission: up and down Dean’s sides, across his back, down to brush against the swell of his ass. He wants to blame it on the tequila and doesn’t know if he can.

“Fuck me,” Dean demands. “You want to. Gonna feel so good. You remember what it feels like, Sammy? You remember how good it is to stick your cock into your big brother?”

More weapons hurled, and maybe Dean is trying to provoke Sam into taking a swing, but instead the yearning, desolate part of Sam surges forward and he catches Dean’s mouth with his own. Dean kisses him back for all of five seconds, and it’s like trying to kiss a hurricane. His brother is nothing but teeth and bruising force and anger, and when Sam tastes blood he doesn’t know whose it is.

Then Dean pulls back, and Sam grabs at the sink to steady himself, and Dean hauls off and punches him.

“Jesus Christ, Dean!” Sam shouts, cradling his jaw.

Dean squints at him, belligerent and drunk as hell and still beautiful enough to make Sam ache, and then, without another word, turns around and stumbles off to the spare room Bobby’s lending them.

Sam sleeps on the couch that night and a part of him is vindictively smug when he overhears Dean puking his guts out in the morning. Ten minutes later, though, when Dean staggers out into the living room, he feels a surge of pity for his brother.

Dean looks like shit: hair plastered to his head with sweat, skin ashen, eyes red. He stumbles to a stop when he catches sight of Sam and stands there for a few moments, blinking like he’s trying to remember why Sam might have been sleeping out here. Or possibly like he’s trying to remember Sam’s name. Then he turns away and starts rooting around through the piles of books, swaying a little from side to side as he does.

“If you’re looking for some hair of the dog, don’t bother,” Sam announces without sitting up. “I dumped the rest last night after you passed out.”

Dean winces and puts a hand to his ear. “Dude,” he groans, “If you talk a little louder they might hear you over in China.”

“This is my normal speaking voice, Dean. Unlike some assholes, I don’t delight in tormenting my brother in the middle of his hangover.”

“Not fucking hung over,” Dean mutters, and then comes over to stand in front of the couch. “Move.”

Sam’s pulse races. He tells himself that Dean isn’t going to try anything now, not sober, but hope is a demon: impossible to kill. “Why?” he asks, sitting up slowly.

Dean leans—falls, really—forward, catching himself with his left hand and rooting around in the couch cushions with his right.

Sam gives his heart a minute to slow down and then asks, “What the hell are you looking for?”

“My amulet. Lost it somewhere.”

Sam thinks about Dean tearing his shirt off, rough and spiteful, and is pretty sure he knows, generally speaking, where the amulet is. Specifics might be a little tougher: he spent almost an hour picking the kitchen up last night and didn’t see it anywhere.

“Try the kitchen,” he suggests, and something in his voice makes Dean squint at him.

Sam sees Dean take in his jaw for the first time, and the bruise darkening there to match the one around his eye. Sees Dean run his tongue over his own lips, which are swollen and split this morning.

“Did you—” Dean starts, and then backtracks. “What happened?”

“You really don’t remember?”

“No,” Dean says, but he carefully straightens, putting some distance between them. “Last night’s pretty much a wash after we found that bottle of Jose in Bobby’s weapons trunk.”

Of course it is.

As much of an ass as Dean was last night, though, Sam can’t lay this on him. He may be messed up six ways from Sunday about Dad’s death, but Dean is … Even if he won’t admit it, Dean is so far from okay that he probably doesn’t understand what that word means anymore.

“I got drunk and kissed you. You punched me like you said you would. End of story.”

“Oh,” Dean says, and then frowns as he rubs at the back of his neck. “Uh, sorry.”

“I’m not,” Sam responds.

He isn’t, either. Dean’s drunken war tactics are probably the closest that he’s ever going to come to having what he wants, and he doesn’t care if that makes him a sick, pathetic loser. He only has so much room inside of him at a time for regret, and right now all that space is reserved for his relationship with Dad.

Dean doesn’t look disgusted by Sam’s admission, just weary. Resigned. “Yeah, whatever,” he sighs, and wanders off to the kitchen to continue his search.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When Dean does it again, a couple of days after the Rakshasa job, it becomes a pattern, and Sam starts up another count in his head.

It happens like this.

Dean’s working on the Impala, which isn’t surprising: it seems to be his default mode these days. Sam means to have an actual conversation with his brother and he tries, desperately, to let Dean know that he isn’t the only one hurting, that he can talk to Sam, that he can tell Sam anything.

Dean listens but doesn’t hear anything Sam says. He just stands there with this closed, hostile expression on his face until Sam has to walk away or start throwing punches.

He doesn’t get far before the sound of breaking glass pulls him back.

When he rounds a stack of rundown cars, the sight of his brother taking a tire iron to his beloved baby brings Sam up short. Hypnotized by the hollow thuds, he watches as Dean’s careful masks are shredded to rags along with the Impala’s trunk. His brother has to work to pull the iron up after every strike, which means that he’s really beating the crap out of the car. Probably pulling half a dozen muscles while he’s at it.

Finally, Dean spins and hurls the iron out across the salvage yard with a yell. His eyes pass over Sam like he isn’t even there and then he spins back to the Impala, dropping both hands on the savaged trunk and leaning forward. His head hangs and his back rises and falls with every shuddering breath.

After almost three full minutes of silence, Sam feels safe enough to approach. He edges up behind his brother, careful to keep just out of reach, and says, “Dean?”

Dean’s shoulders tense beneath his t-shirt, but he doesn’t respond.

Biting his bottom lip, Sam takes another step. “Hey, man, are you—”

His words cut off as Dean whirls, lunges, and grabs hold of Sam’s shirt. Sam is positive that his brother is going to go to work on _him_ now, but instead Dean mashes their mouths together. He kisses Sam as though they’re fighting: wields his tongue like a knife. Stunned by the fact that it’s happening again—that Dean is telling Sam yes for a third _(fourth if he counts the night he left for Stanford)_ time—Sam just stands there and lets his brother ravage his mouth.

Eventually, Dean pulls back to growl, “Either punch me already or get on board the fucking train,” and then dives in again.

 _Bad idea,_ Sam thinks, but he’s overruled by his body and his bruised, needy heart, and he finds himself fighting for control of the kiss. Dean’s probably going to remember that he doesn’t actually want this at any moment and punch him again, but what the fuck: it can’t possibly hurt more than the kiss itself. Hell, Dean could beat him bloody and unconscious and it wouldn’t come close to the shredded, hollow agony of Dean kissing him with so much _rage_ , even if that anger isn’t really directed at Sam.

Desperate to get something out of this for himself, Sam shoves his hands up underneath his brother’s t-shirt and runs them across sweat-drenched skin. Dean does him one better, breaking the kiss to yank Sam’s shirt over his head. Sam takes advantage of his brother’s preoccupation with the fabric to seize control: gripping Dean by the waist, he pushes him back up against the Impala.

“Gonna fuck me?” Dean demands. He tilts his head back, challenging, and sweat glistens in the hollow of his throat. Sam postpones answering to lick at the shining moisture, and when Dean tosses his head in a clear ‘get the fuck off’ gesture, he puts one palm on his brother’s forehead and draws his head back for better access. The sun beats down on his back, burning, and Sam feels drunk, maybe possessed, but either way completely unable to stop.

“Yeah,” he pants, and then bites down on his brother’s Adam’s apple hard enough to leave teeth marks. Dean utters a choked cry and squirms against him. “You want it, you got it.”

Dean’s hands are on Sam’s pants again, and this time he has no trouble getting them open and pushing them down Sam’s hips. Sam releases his brother long enough to shove his own jeans down the rest of the way and then yanks Dean’s open, popping the top button clean off in his haste.

“Shirt,” he orders.

Dean immediately draws the fabric up and off, his movements hurried but careful enough that this time the amulet stays where it belongs. Still using his brother’s hips as handles, Sam pulls Dean forward, turns him, and then shoves him back down. Dean’s experience with guys might be limited, but he knows enough to lean forward and spread as far as he can with his jeans around his ankles.

“Fuck me,” he pants into the pitted, black metal. “Come on, Sammy.”

Sam comes back to himself a little at the sound of his childhood nickname. _Bobby could come out here any minute,_ he tells himself, and, _we need lube._ He takes a single, shuffling step back and his brother stiffens.

“Don’t you pussy out on me,” Dean snarls.

When Dean twists his head to look over his shoulder, Sam gets a good look at his brother's eyes and realizes that he was wrong before. That wasn’t anger fueling the kiss: it was despair. Despair so deep and boundless that it has somehow twisted in on itself and mutated into hate. And Sam knows without having to think twice that Dean’s hate isn’t directed at him, or Dad, or anywhere it should be. No, Dean’s aiming it a little closer to home.

“Dean,” he starts hoarsely.

Dean’s eyes narrow and he threatens, “You don’t do it, I’ll go find someone who will.”

Sam thinks of Dean going out to pick some guy up at a bar—letting some asshole, some stranger, put their hands all over him: letting them _hurt_ him—and is back on top of his brother before he realizes he’s moving.

“You need this, you’re getting it from me,” he says, gripping Dean’s hair as best as he can and hauling his head up.

“All talk and no show, Sammy,” Dean taunts, and then shuts up as he feels Sam’s cock press against him.

“This is going to hurt,” Sam warns, although he’s past the point of stopping. They both are. The brakes on this particular train have been snapped clean off.

“Good,” Dean bites out, and then shouts as Sam shoves in.

This time, Dean’s incredibly vocal as Sam fucks him. Each of Sam’s thrusts open him up further while rocking his chest against the twisted metal and Dean keeps making hoarse, hurt noises. It’s like fucking a rag doll, Dean just lying there passively and taking whatever Sam’s giving him, and Sam growls deep in his throat. It makes his thighs burn, but he shifts a little lower to get a different angle and his next thrust makes Dean buck uncontrollably beneath him.

“That’s it,” Sam grunts, and then concentrates on hitting that spot over and over again.

A few minutes later, when he gets a hand between his brother and the car and grips Dean’s cock, he finds him half-hard at least, which is a start. He starts stroking Dean while pounding relentlessly into him from behind, and Dean shouts, “Fuck!” loudly enough that the word echoes back to them.

Sam immediately releases his brother’s hair and claps his hand over Dean’s mouth instead, muffling the noise. Dean braces himself on his left elbow, grips the side of the car with his right hand, and _(finally)_ starts fucking back into Sam’s thrusts and then forward into his hand. Sam can feel his brother’s thighs trembling, and Dean’s breath shudders warm and moist against his palm.

“This what you want?” he pants in his brother’s ear. “Huh, Dean? Is this what you think you deserve?”

Dean shakes and nods as best as he can and then sinks his teeth into Sam’s hand and comes all over the car. His inner muscles spasm and Sam follows immediately, driving his own teeth deep into Dean’s shoulder as he shoots.

When he’s done, he collapses on top of his brother, and his weight drives Dean back down onto the metal with a grunt. They’re both overheated, covered in sweat and breathing hard. Bobby could show up at any moment and catch Sam with his dick in the cookie jar, but Sam can't move. Dean’s scent is too strong: getting to his head like a hundred proof liquor.

He works his teeth free from his brother’s flesh—Dean grunts—and then, with a sickening pang of remorse, licks gently at the already-purple mark. He didn't actually break the skin, but the damaged flesh tastes like blood anyway. Dean stirs as Sam does his best to soothe the bite and then rolls his shoulders.

“Get off.”

Ignoring the command, Sam presses an apologetic kiss to his brother's marred skin. It's an attempt to gentle what just happened between them, but Dean isn't having any of it. He spits out a curse and then shoves back, throwing Sam off balance.

Sam does his best to catch himself, but his feet get tangled in his jeans and he tips over backwards anyway. The fall rips his cock free from Dean with enough speed and roughness that Dean yells and Sam himself lets out a pained grunt. Then his ass hits the dirt and his teeth snap together jarringly.

From his place on the ground, Sam looks up and gets just a glimpse of his brother’s swollen, abused hole— _Jesus Christ, is he_ bleeding _?_ —before Dean pulls his pants up and turns around. Dean's chest has been scraped to hell by the savaged metal and this time there’s _definitely_ blood, dripping clean down to his stomach.

Sam flinches. Guilt grips him by the gut and jerks him to his feet. He tries to step forward, almost falls, pulls his own pants up and tries it again.

“Shit, Dean, I’m sorry. Lemme see.” Sam reaches out and Dean slaps his hand away.

“It’s fine. Had my tetanus shot a couple of years ago.” His gait is painfully awkward as he moves around the side of the car to retrieve his shirt. “I asked for it anyway.”

Yeah, Dean did, but that doesn’t mean Sam had to give it to him. Jesus Christ, what the hell was he _thinking_?

It hurts to speak, but he manages to choke out, “Come inside and I can help—”

“Sam.” There’s flint in Dean’s voice. When he turns to face Sam, his eyes are twin shards of glass.

It isn't a no. It's a complete and utter denial that Sam has any stake in Dean's well-being, or maybe in his life at all.

“Yeah,” Sam whispers. “Yeah, okay.” He slinks back toward the house without another word.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Two days later, Dean wakes Sam up in the middle of the night by climbing into his bed for a third time and offers him his fifth yes. Keeping track of all the counts is starting to make Sam’s head ache.

When Dean reaches for him, Sam turns his back on his brother and makes his shoulders as forbidding as he knows how.

“Sam,” Dean says, sounding awkward and angry and hurt all at once.

“I’m not going to be this for you,” Sam announces as he stares at the far wall. “I know you’re hurting, Dean, but I-I’m not great either, and I can’t.”

Dean is silent for a moment and then the bed moves as he retreats. When he speaks again, his voice is softer: almost apologetic. “Yeah, okay, Sammy.”

It’s the closest he’s sounded to his old self since the cabin, and Sam rolls over to call him back, but Dean is already gone.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Three days after that, Sam catches his brother in a back alley with his pants around his knees and someone’s cock in his ass. The guy has his hand wrapped around Dean’s throat, squeezing tight, but Dean is still moving for it: encouraging.

Sam cold-cocks the guy from the side without any warning, dropping him like a stone. Dean starts to fall as well and Sam catches him. Dean’s hands clutch at Sam’s shirt and he blinks off into space, dazed and unaware of his surroundings. Sam could have been a demon or a vamp and his brother would still be clinging to him.

Nauseous and trembling, he pauses long enough to make sure the asshole was wearing a condom and then pulls Dean’s pants up and leads him over to the loaner truck.

Dean starts coming out of it a little when they’re halfway back to Bobby’s.

“You didn’t have to hit him,” he rasps from the passenger seat. A bruise is forming in a hand-shaped band across his throat.

Sam’s hands tighten on the wheel.

“I asked him to,” Dean adds.

“I know.”


	3. Chapter 3

The sixth time, Dean doesn’t so much tell Sam yes as Sam decides he needs it.

The Impala is almost rebuilt, but Dean isn’t. Dean is broken somewhere inside and bleeding internally. Sam can feel the jagged pieces grating inside his own chest, and he can’t even perform any basic triage because Dean won’t let him anywhere near the wound.

What he _can_ do, though, is act as his brother’s safety valve, and when he notices Dean casting lingering glances at the truck Bobby said they could use around town, Sam asks Bobby to clear out for a few hours— _gonna try to get Dean to open up_ —and then goes out to the salvage yard.

Dean’s underneath the Impala’s hood, but he straightens at Sam’s approach. He’s covered in enough dirt and grease smears that the bruise on his neck is almost invisible.

“What’s up?” he asks as he wipes his hands on a rag that looks filthy enough that the attempt is probably doing more harm than good.

Wordlessly, Sam grabs his brother by the bicep and draws him toward the house.

“Woah,” Dean protests, trying to pull free. “What the fuck, man?”

Sam tightens his grip and meets his brother’s eyes. “You need this,” he says.

Dean stares back at him for a long moment, expressionless, and then his mouth thins out and he nods.

He follows Sam upstairs and walks into their bedroom. Sam shuts the door behind his brother and starts taking off his clothes. He can hear Dean doing the same thing only a few feet away and, despite the knot in his stomach, his cock stirs. When he turns around, Dean is standing in the middle of the room, naked and practically vibrating with nerves. He’s gorgeous: bruises obscured by grease and only a few, thin red lines left from that train wreck of a fuck on the Impala.

As Sam moves toward him, Dean visibly flinches and then forces himself to hold his ground. It’s a reminder that Dean still doesn’t want this—that he doesn’t want _Sam_ —but they both know that he needs something right now. He's spiraling out of control, desperate for someone to hurt him, and if Sam can’t do it then there are plenty of sick fucks out there who will. Intentionally or not, it won’t be long before Dean finds himself someone who won’t stop until he isn’t breathing anymore.

Right now Dean needs Sam to be this for him. Dean needs either to get fucked or to have the shit kicked out of him. Sam doesn’t know which would be more damaging in the long run, but it doesn’t matter because he can’t bring himself to hit Dean. He just can’t.

He touches his brother’s arms, just a light brush, and Dean sucks in a breath. His muscles are tense enough that it has to be hurting, which is, of course, the whole point. But as Sam meets his brother’s panicked, pleading gaze—as he catches the sour scent of despair rolling off of Dean like heat—he realizes that there’s a third option.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says.

There’s a flicker of something in Dean’s eyes—uncertainty and wariness for sure, but Sam thinks _(hopes)_ that there was some relief there as well. His brother doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t bolt for the door either. It’s a start.

“I don’t know what you think you need punishing for,” he adds, and then grimaces because it’s a lie. They don’t talk about Dad’s unexpected death and the disappearance of the Colt, or about Dean’s miraculous recovery, but Sam’s pretty sure not a minute passes when one of them isn’t thinking of it.

“But I can’t do that to you,” he continues after a moment. “I won’t. If you want to offer penance, though, I can help you with that. And maybe that’ll be enough.”

He cups his brother’s cheek with one hand, gently as he can. Dean shuts his eyes and holds himself still. Forcing his own desires down as far as he can, Sam leans in until he and Dean share one breath and then stops.

“Open your mouth,” he says, and Dean’s lips part.

“Kiss me,” he orders, and Dean obeys.

Sam takes it slowly as Dean will let him. He lays his brother down on his back on the bed and runs his hands over all of that warm skin. He kisses the sensitive join between Dean’s legs and nuzzles at his balls. He licks lines up and down Dean’s cock until it’s hard and angry-looking. He worships every part of his brother until there are tears running down Dean’s cheeks, and he’s gasping out, “Don’t. Don’t!”

Sam immediately sits up and moves back a little, giving his brother some space. “Dean,” he calls softly.

Dean lets out a pitiful whimper and turns his head away from the sound of Sam’s voice. Sam’s chest aches with how much he wants to put his arms around his brother and just hold him. How much he wants this to be _real_ , and not some sick but necessary coping mechanism.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks, glad that his own longing isn’t audible in the question.

Dean grabs hold of the bedding with both fists and squeezes until his knuckles go white.

“You need to tell me what you want,” Sam says, and Dean chokes out, “Please.”

“Please what?” Sam isn’t playing twenty questions to be cruel, but he _feels_ cruel, watching Dean twist on the bed.

“Gotta—gotta come. Please.”

“Do you want me to blow you?” Sam asks. He’s surprised he could get that question out at all.

Dean shakes his head. “No,” he says. “No, just. Your hand. Just that.”

“Okay.”

It only takes three pulls of Dean’s cock before he shoots, drenching Sam’s hand and his own stomach. Sam releases his brother immediately and climbs off the bed. His hands are shaking and his knees are weak. He thinks he might pass out in a few moments.

On the bed, Dean stirs. “W-where are you—”

“Bathroom,” Sam says, turning enough for Dean to get a look at his aching erection.

With a struggle, Dean pushes up to his elbows. His legs are still parted the way Sam left them, inviting. “I thought you were gonna, uh, you know?”

“I told you, I’m not going to punish you,” Sam repeats, and then lets himself out of the room before he loses his resolve.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean seems better after that, as though Sam was able to ground him somehow, and Sam doesn’t have to touch him again. They stay at Bobby’s long enough for Dean’s bruises to heal up and then take their leave. There’s an odd gravity to Bobby’s parting ‘take care of him’ to Sam, and he wonders briefly if Bobby somehow knows. But they’re leaving, and it doesn’t matter, and Sam puts it out of his mind.

They get off to a shaky start in Montana, and Sam can’t figure out if it’s this Gordon guy that’s the problem or if it’s that they’re after vampires again, and it’s making Dean think of Dad. Whatever the reason, Dean looses control enough to punch Sam in the parking lot. Sam can tell that his brother wants him to punch back—sees Dean's self-hatred and desire to be hurt welling up again—but he refuses to be baited.

If Dean needs handling, it’s going to be the kind that doesn’t land him in the hospital.

Dean settles after a knockdown fight with Gordon, though, and the crisis passes. Sam turns down his brother’s offer of a free shot down with a lopsided smile and a hand wave.

They’re in Illinois when Dean finally pulls over to the shoulder and gets out of the car to sit on the hood. In the mountain air, he reaches inside of himself and pulls out the broken bits. He holds them out to Sam, eyes wet with tears, and asks him what he can say to mend the pieces back together. He asks what Sam can say to make Dad’s death—his deal—all right.

Sam cradles his broken hand in his lap and swallows down all of the inappropriate things he wants to say. He doesn’t think it would help Dean out any to know that Sam is certain that Dad got a damned good bargain, just him and the Colt for Dean’s life. And Dean doesn’t need to hear that Sam would be more than willing to sell his own soul, if that was what it took to keep Dean safe.

Besides, if Dean hasn’t figured that much out by now, then he really is a moron.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They meet Andy Gallagher and his unhinged brother in Gunthrie, Oklahoma, and Sam is more than a little shaken by the fallout. He manages to hold onto himself until Gunthrie is a few hours behind them and then he asks Dean to pull over. He gets out of the car, head spinning and mouth dry, and kneels on the side of the road with his head in his hands.

Distantly, he can hear Dean coming after him, and then Dean’s hands settle on his shoulders and anchor him in his body with an abruptness that’s almost painful.

“Sammy,” Dean says. “Hey, Sam.”

“I’m gonna,” Sam says. “Dean, I’m gonna—”

“No, you won’t,” Dean snaps, denying Sam’s destiny with lucky number thirteen, and moves one of his hands so that he can rub the back of Sam’s neck. “You’re gonna be fine, Sam,” he promises, softer.

Sam leans into his brother, letting Dean take most of his weight. When he turns his head to one side, the scent of leather and aftershave and _Dean_ hits him hard in the gut and drives a whimper from him.

Dean slides his arm around Sam without a word and holds him.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

With both of them off balance and painfully aware of it, they restrict themselves to easy jobs: salt and burns, mostly. As they fall into a routine of research, dig and immolate, Sam rediscovers the boundaries of his skin. After the third visionless week, the fist that closed around his lungs in Gunthrie loosens its grip.

Dean seems to be finding his own stride as well. The smiles he cracks feel genuine again, and he’s back to the jokes and the swagger and the thousand casual touches that drive Sam nuts and light him up inside at the same time.

They aren’t okay, either of them, not by a long shot, but Sam thinks that maybe they aren’t quite so broken anymore. Then comes Mississippi, and dread is a constant, cold taste in Sam’s mouth.

When the hounds disappear from Evan Hudson’s house, Evan is overjoyed but Sam spends an eternal hour waiting for Dean to come back. Wondering _if_ Dean is going to come back.

Dean does, finally, and Sam can tell that his brother didn’t cut any deals. It’s written all over Dean’s expressionless face. It’s scrawled in his hollow eyes.

Sam welcomes that fourteenth no with wide-open arms.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

They’re having breakfast in Lucy’s Kitchenette when Dean smiles again: a slight, hesitant lift to his lips for Sam’s clowning. Sam immediately stops blowing bubbles in his milk and offers a wide grin of his own. His brother’s lips twitch a little higher in return and Sam doesn’t understand how he can be both so happy and so sad at the same time. His chest aches attempting to manage it.

Then Dean flicks his straw wrapper in Sam’s face and says, “You’re such an ass.”

“Yeah, but you love me.”

“Oh yeah,” Dean deadpans. “Been shopping for rings and everything.”

The taunt jars and after a moment Sam places the words in his father’s mouth and realizes why. Dean’s face has gone ashen, and now he drops his eyes to his plate and pokes at his eggs. It should hurt, the reminder of Jess, of their father, but there’s only a distant pang. It feels no worse than picking at a scab.

“Dean,” Sam says. Dean stops poking but doesn’t look up. “I know she offered. Why’d you turn her down?”

Dean shifts his grip on his fork, and Sam thinks for a moment that he isn’t going to answer. Then he looks at Sam and deadpans, “She wouldn’t throw in the free food dehydrator.”

The words are a joke—a shield—but Sam can hear the truth beneath them. He can read it in Dean’s eyes.

 _I didn’t want to leave you._

“Yeah,” he says, and is thankful when Dean doesn’t comment on the way his voice cracks. “That one’s a real deal breaker.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

A week later, Dean gives a real answer when he should’ve said no again and Sam’s destiny closes in on him. He runs—more from himself than from Dean, but lately the two have gotten too entwined for him to make any distinctions. While he hunts down answers, he wonders for the first time if maybe the way he feels about Dean comes from the darkness inside of him. Maybe that overwhelming hunger isn’t him at all, but the demon’s influence.

Then Gordon shows up, kidnapping Dean and holding him hostage, and it’s the ensuing rush of love and fear that bring Sam home more than anything else.

Nothing that feels so much like praying could ever be rooted in evil.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In Cornwall, Connecticut, Sam is drunk and frightened and he tries to kiss Dean again. After the violence of his yeses, Dean’s fifteenth no is gentle: a shake of his head and insistent hands pushing Sam down into the mattress of the bed, pushing him into sleep.

In the morning, Sam pretends that he doesn’t remember the attempted kiss, and Dean lets him. They have bigger things to worry about, anyway.

Dean’s promise sits between them through the rest of the job, corpse cold and wrong, but Sam isn’t going to let him forget it.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Nos sixteen through twenty seven are to various questions, such as ‘I got something on my face?’ or ‘You planning on painting my portrait?’ or ‘Are you waiting for me to go darkside?’ because Dean won’t stop staring at him. At first, Sam is positive it's because of that twice-demanded promise to keep an eye on him, but as the weeks continue to pass and Dean keeps staring, he begins to wonder if it’s something else.

Dean always flushes when Sam catches him at it, is the thing, and then he looks pissed and snaps. After a while, Dean’s mood rubs off on Sam and then they’re both on edge and quick to snarl, like two junkyard dogs fighting over a bone they don’t even know is there. It’s worse when they’re alone, Sam notices: maybe because no one else is around to diffuse the tension.

Dean isn’t sleeping well, either: hasn’t been since Connecticut. He moves restlessly in his bed, and sometimes moans, and Sam can’t figure out if they’re good noises or bad. He tries to ask his brother about his dreams, but Dean shuts him down every time.

Then, as if things couldn’t get more strained, Dean starts flinching away when Sam touches him. He’s never done that before—not after Sam made his first move and not after Nebraska—and Sam’s insides feel like they’re eating themselves.

“Is it me?” he finally asks.

They’re in their motel room, watching the original Creature From the Black Lagoon from their respective beds. Or rather, _Sam_ is watching Creature From the Black Lagoon.

Dean gives him a ‘what the fuck, dude?’ look, and Sam clarifies, “Is it the whole sex thing? Are you, you know, having flashbacks or—”

“Jesus Christ, Sam, _no_ ,” Dean spits out as quickly as he can, turning to the TV.

Sam realizes, abruptly and with a shock, that they have never really talked about it. His feelings for Dean have always just sat between them, the third Winchester brother that no one ever talks about or acknowledges: the hunchback with the bulging left eye and the limp.

“I know things got a little rocky there for a while, but I wouldn’t, okay? I’m not ever going to touch you like that again.”

“Oh my God!” Dean says in this horrified little voice and buries his face in the mattress. “Just stop!” The demand comes out muffled, but audible.

Sam screws up his courage and pushes forward. “You just. Dean, you keep staring, man, and you can deny it all you want, but—”

Which is when Dean shoves up from his bed and bowls Sam over backwards onto _his_ bed and kisses him.

It’s different from all the other kisses in some way that Sam can’t put a name to. There are specific things he can point to, sure—Dean isn’t trying to chew his lips off this time, for one—but mostly it’s just a quality that the others were lacking: something soft and almost tender that makes it impossible for Sam to do anything other than kiss back the same way.

For the first time, it’s gentle enough for him to taste Dean instead of the iron tang of blood, and eager enough that the it isn’t tainted by the stale hint of approaching death, or by Dean’s bitter self-hatred. Without all of those competing flavors, Dean’s mouth tastes like home.

Sam can feel the fullness of his brother’s mouth in a way he never did before, when the two of them were mashed up against each other like hoplites in battle. Now Dean’s lips play with his, closer one moment and then withdrawing in a tease. When Sam gives chase, Dean takes the opportunity to catch his lower lip between his teeth. He doesn’t bite down, though. Instead, he pulls Sam’s lip into his mouth and runs his tongue over it with delicate swipes before surging forward again into Sam’s mouth to explore.

Dean, Sam realizes between moans, is actually a good kisser when he wants to be.

As abruptly as he came, Dean is gone. Sam stares at the ceiling for a few minutes, trembling and shell-shocked, and then lifts his head. His brother is sitting on his own bed again, watching Sam in that odd, intent way that started the conversation in the first place.

When he sees that he has Sam’s attention, Dean says, “It’s not the sex thing, okay?”

Sam kind of wants to tell Dean that there were better ways he could have demonstrated that, except that ‘better' isn’t exactly what he means, or maybe it is, and who the hell can expect him to be thinking right now anyway?

“That was … kissing,” he points out.

Dean snorts, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Guess they taught you something in college after all, huh, Sammy?” he says before turning around and settling in to actually watch the movie.

Sam stares at his brother’s back and thinks, _That was one. That’s the first time that Dean kissed me._

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Predictably enough, once the shock has worn off in the morning, Sam starts flipping out a little, and shouting, and demanding to know what the hell kind of game Dean thinks he’s playing, because this isn’t funny and … Yeah, right around there is where kiss number two comes in.

When Dean finally releases him this time, he looks thoughtful. “Hmm,” he says.

“Green,” Sam says back. It makes perfect sense at the time: he just spent four minutes staring into his brother’s eyes and he’s having a little trouble coming out of that.

“Look, man, I’m just … I’m trying to figure some stuff out, okay?” Dean says, and his _hands_ are on Sam’s _waist_. “Back off and give me a little breathing room already.” Then he turns away and goes back to packing.

When they stop that night, Sam starts researching possession.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The first week after the botched job at the City Bank Milwaukee is hell. Sam’s panicked brain sees recognition in every face and a Fed in every man or woman who looks at either of them too long. He can’t sleep at all the first two nights: just lies awake expecting this Henderson guy _(or is it Henricksen?)_ to kick in the door and arrest them.

Dean is even worse off, and Sam doesn’t think it’s just because of his on-air time. Despite Sam’s size, people always seem to see Dean more vividly. Part of it is Dean’s good looks—seriously, they’re ridiculous—but a lot of it has to do with the way his brother carries himself.

Dean swaggers into rooms, head held high and mouth set in a cocky twist. He wears the full force of his personality on his skin. There’s a kind of halo around him, and Sam has been with his brother for so long that his eyes have managed to adjust, but the bank hunt aftermath is bringing it back into focus.

“Stop it,” he tells Dean the fourth time they walk into a diner and Dean makes heads swivel their way.

Dean is shifty, uneasy in his own skin underneath the scrutiny, and he mumbles, “I’m not fucking doing anything,” as he slides into a corner booth.

He sits so that he’s facing the door—one of Dad’s lessons that Dean had fallen out of the habit of following, but has recently taken up again with a vengeance—and Sam is feeling exposed enough that he follows suit, sitting down next to his brother. Dean glances at him, startled, and Sam braces himself for the inevitable protest, but Dean just drops his eyes and studies the tabletop.

When the waitress brings them their menus, she comments on what a handsome couple they make, and Dean doesn’t correct her.

The absence of a denial burns inside of Sam, and he tentatively moves his leg over so that it’s brushing against Dean’s. Dean doesn’t react and, emboldened, Sam hooks their ankles together. His heart pounds in his throat as Dean’s leg presses against his and, for the first time since Milwaukee, the rest of the world fades to a dull, unimportant blur.

Then Dean disengages his foot.

“No, Sam,” he says for the twenty-eighth time. His voice is flat and cold, like he didn’t kiss Sam twice a month ago—really and truly _kiss_ him. Like he wasn’t just letting Sam twine their legs together: like he hadn’t leaned into that first, tentative brush.

Sam looks at his brother’s profile as Dean stares at the door and understands that it isn’t just the fear of being recognized that’s been messing Dean up.

“What did he say to you?” he asks because that has to be it, that Fed said something and now Dean’s different again: distant.

Dean’s mouth tightens. “Nothing.”

“C’mon, man, I can tell he said something.”

“Just crap about Dad,” Dean mutters. “He was talking out of his ass.”

And that’s the end of the conversation.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Funny how all of the research Sam did on the subject of possession does absolutely nothing to stop Meg when she waltzes right into his body and makes herself at home. He even sees her coming, a black cloud rushing at him from beneath a nearby car, but he doesn’t even have time to turn away before he’s lying on his back on the sidewalk with a foul sulfur taste in his mouth and her voice in his head.

 _Well, howdy, baby,_ Meg greets him. _Miss me?_

Sam howls in frustrated rage and fear and then everything goes dark. He’s allowed to catch bits and pieces—sees Meg hurl a beer can at some unoffending gas station clerk, sees her use his hands to drag a knife across a man’s throat—but they’re just images on a movie screen.

The first time she lets him forward enough to really feel anything, he’s sitting on a bed in a motel room with Dean squatting next to him and pawing frantically at his stomach. Sam doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s pretty sure that it isn’t anything good.

“I don’t think it’s my blood,” he hears his voice say, and then Meg laughs in his head at Dean’s wide-eyed, shocked look.

 _Oh, this is going to be fun,_ she tells Sam.

 _Dean!_ Sam shouts, struggling for control of his voice. _God, Dean, get out of here!_

Meg laughs again and shoves him back down into the darkness.

It could be minutes or days or hours when she hauls him up again. _Gotta see this, Sammy,_ she tells him while the world reassembles itself, and then Sam is watching from the back of his head as his body tosses Dean up against a wall somewhere, hands wrapped in Dean’s shirt and holding on tight. Dean grunts at the impact and Sam’s mouth swallows the sound as it descends.

 _No!_ Sam protests with the force of all of Dean’s nos combined. He fights for control, but Meg ignores him, shoving Sam’s thigh between Dean’s legs and pressing hard against Dean’s cock.

“I need this,” Meg whimpers with Sam’s voice in between kisses. “Please, Dean. Please, I need you.”

Dean finally gets over his shock and shoves Sam’s body away. He leans against the wall, panting, and says, “I said _no_ , damn it.” Sam can tell his brother is trying to sound pissed, although Dean’s too shaken to manage it.

 _What do you think, Sammy?_ Meg purrs. _Think we should be a good boy, or should we give big brother what he really wants?_

Sam shouldn’t be able to feel so very cold without a body, but he manages it. _You touch him and I swear to God that when we find the Colt I’m gonna use the last bullet on you._

Meg chuckles. _Temper, temper. Didn’t John ever teach you to share?_

Sam doesn’t have time to scream before he’s shoved back into the dark.

The next time he comes around, Meg has a knife to Jo’s throat and is ordering Dean to shoot. Sam peers through his eyes and tries to see if Dean is bruised: if he’s standing like it hurts to move. He can’t tell. God, he _can’t._

 _He was good,_ Meg whispers conspiratorially as they stare down the gun. _Hardly fought at all once I got him on his knees._

Raging, Sam tries to claw at her with his mind. He doesn’t know if she’s telling the truth _(she can’t be, jesus, no)_ , but he’s sick with revulsion and horror at even the possibility that she is. Distantly, he notes Dean turning from him, Dean offering his back like a goddamned amateur or someone with a death wish, but most of his attention is focused on slipping Meg’s control.

 _Can’t fight me, Sammy,_ Meg taunts as she holds him at arm’s length. _I’m locked up nice and snug in here._

Then, unexpectedly, there’s searing pain. Meg hurls him down into the black with a shriek of rage.

The next thing Sam knows, he’s sprawled on Bobby’s floor. His forearm burns and his knuckles ache. Dean is bloody and battered across from him and Bobby’s standing over him with a fire poker. Sam blinks around at them, dazed and a little nauseous. His mouth tastes like sulfur again.

“Sammy?” Dean checks.

Sam looks at his brother and can’t ask the question he needs to. Instead, he says, “Did I miss anything?”

Dean’s right hook isn’t really a surprise.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It’s almost two weeks before Sam finally forces himself to bring it up. Dean’s shoulder is healing nicely, although it’s definitely going to scar, and the bruising on his face has faded. They’re having burgers at the motel room table, and it’s quiet and peaceful and would feel really nice if Sam didn’t have a lump of dread sitting in his gut.

“Dean,” he says, and Dean’s eyes flick up inquisitively.

“I remember,” Sam says, and then stops. “I remember kissing you.”

“Good to hear that Alzheimer’s has cleared right up,” Dean grunts, but the way he drops his gaze and shifts a little in his chair tells Sam that he knows what he means.

“Did I—did she—”

“Nothing happened, Sam.”

Sam swallows. He wants to believe, but Dean still isn’t looking at him. “She said—”

“Demons lie,” Dean interrupts. He lifts his head and meets Sam’s gaze squarely. “They lie,” he repeats, and the rush of relief through Sam’s body leaves him trembling.

In the darkness that night, when they’re both lying in their separate beds, Dean says, “That’s when I knew.”

Even on the edge of sleep, Sam has no trouble recognizing the dropped thread of their earlier conversation. It’s something in Dean’s tone, or maybe in the false brusqueness of his voice.

“Knew what?” he asks.

“That you weren’t you,” Dean answers. He falls silent and the sheets rustle as he moves. Sam lies on his back, waiting. Eventually, he decides that Dean’s done and starts to drift again.

Then Dean says, “All these years, not once did you ever try to pull that on me. You never—you didn’t try to guilt me into it. You wouldn’t do that to me.”

Sam waits for Dean to speak again, but this time his brother really is done, and almost half an hour later, his breathing evens out into the steady rhythms of sleep.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

There’s a woman in Frisco. She’s beautiful and funny and uncomplicated, aside from the minor detail that she’s a werewolf, and when she’s cured Dean all but throws Sam into bed with her. Sam lets it happen because he can sense that there might be something there: maybe a way out for both him and for Dean, who really deserves better than to spend the rest of his life as the uncomfortable object of his little brother’s affections.

 _Yes,_ Dean tells him silently. _Yes, go on._ Move _on._

 _Yes,_ Dean tells him, and that’s seven even without the actual words, and Sam goes.

But as he slides into Madison, he knows that this isn’t going to be the answer. His head and his heart are still full of Dean as he thrusts into her slick heat, and it’s a goddamned shame. Sam’s sorrow over the things that might have been gentles him, and they end with a smooth, rocking motion like a ship at sea. After, she lets him kiss her for long minutes: offering the only apology he can manage.

“This is a one time thing, isn’t it?” she asks finally, curled up in the circle of his arm.

Sam toys with her hair as he stares at the ceiling. “Yeah,” he admits. Guilt is a dull ache in his chest.

“It’s him, right? Your friend?” Sam stiffens and she nods. “Thought so. I saw the way you look at him.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sam answers after a moment. “He isn’t—” _Twisted like me,_ he wants to say, but she doesn’t know that they’re brothers so he can’t. Finally, he settles on, “Dean’s not gay.”

“Maybe it isn’t my place to say it, but he loves you.”

“Yeah.” Sam laughs bitterly. “Like a brother.”

“No,” Madison argues, lifting her head to look at him. “Sam, he _loves_ you. He does. He looks at you too, you know? When you aren’t looking back. He looks at you like you make the sun rise in the morning.”

That undying, hopeful part of Sam perks up at that, reminding him of those two, unrepeated winter kisses, but he pushes it away. _That’s just Dean,_ he reminds himself. _It’s just the way he is._

Dean, his brother, whose world _does_ revolve around Sam, but not quite in the right way.

Madison seems to get that this isn’t a conversation she’s going to win and changes the subject by asking, “Stay the night?”

Sam offers her a pained but genuine smile. “Sure.”

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Less than twenty-four hours later, Dean tries to tell Sam no again. Sam remembers the warm weight of Madison in his arms and won’t let his brother shield him this time.

When Madison sees him coming, she starts to cry. She smiles through her tears, though, and her bravery hurts. “Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you.”

“Turn around,” Sam tells her, and she turns to look out the window. He brushes his hand down her arm: kisses her hair. “Is there anything else you need to do first?” he asks, and when she opens her mouth, distracted, he puts two bullets in her heart.

Later, Sam lies on his side atop a sunken, motel mattress and cries. The mattress dips further as Dean climbs on behind him and he stiffens.

“Don’t,” he chokes out, but he doesn’t really mean it, and he doesn’t resist when Dean wraps strong arms around him and holds him close.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Jail is even worse than Sam thought it would be.

People mostly leave him alone, probably because of his size and the open hostility in the set of his jaw, but Dean’s face gets him in trouble. Sam hears ‘no’ from his brother more times in one day than in their entire life together, none of it directed Sam’s way, and by lockdown Dean’s knuckles are red and raw from defending his honor.

Sam isn’t actually worried about his brother’s virtue—Dean can handle most anything, and Sam is keeping an eye on him just in case—but it leaves him feeling nauseous anyway. He hates the way Dean’s shoulders are starting to slump: the way he’s doing his best to draw in on himself and avoid notice, like anything he can do will disguise the girly mouth and lashes and too green eyes and slim, tapered hips.

It’s worse after the fight with Tiny. Dean’s bruises only draw attention to his beauty and leave him looking vulnerable. The cons are restless, like they can scent blood in the water, and Sam realizes for the first time that they’re outnumbered. Teamwork seems like an impossible prospect here, but if enough inmates band together they’ll be able to overpower both Sam and Dean and take what they want.

When Deacon tells them that the lawyer came through, Sam’s knees go weak with relief and it takes all of his self-control not to kiss the man.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In the Wish World, Dean had a girlfriend, and an apartment, and a real job, and a mother, and Sam hated him.

“So that was your perfect world, huh?” Sam says bitterly after Dean describes everything. “Don’t you think you were overcompensating just a little?”

Dean looks at him in a soft, gentle way that tells Sam that his brother knows exactly why he’s so upset, and says, “It was just a wish. I wished that Mom never died, and things … they happened different. It wasn’t perfect.”

Sam utters a disbelieving laugh and looks away.

“It wasn’t perfect,” Dean repeats more firmly, and this time he grabs Sam’s wrist.

Sam clenches his fingers into a fist and feels Dean’s grip tighten around him in turn. His throat hurts.

“So you wouldn’t—if you could, you wouldn’t want to trade me for him? You didn’t want to stay there?”

“No,” Dean answers simply, and rubs his thumb against Sam’s pulse.

And that’s number twenty-nine.


	4. Chapter 4

In Cold Oak, South Dakota, Sam dies in his brother’s arms.

It doesn’t take.

In a Wyoming graveyard, with Jake’s blood smeared on his face and the demon dead on the ground, he finds out why.

That’s thirty.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam manages to hold off on his anger until they’re alone, but then it bubbles out full force. He yells at Dean for almost two hours, and Dean just sits there and takes it, looking pale and tired but happy. Looking triumphant.

Finally, Sam gets pissed enough that he hurls one of the motel’s lamps across the room. When Dean doesn’t even flinch, all of Sam’s rage congeals in his chest, turning into despair. He sinks down on the bed next to Dean and puts his head in his hands.

“God, Dean,” he whispers. “You can’t do this to me.”

“I had to,” Dean tells him softly. It’s the first thing he has said since they checked in.

“Bullshit,” Sam says, but there’s no real anger in it.

“I had to,” Dean repeats.

They sit there quietly for a long time.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sam thought that Dean would be trying to cram as many women as possible into his final _(no, not final, not gonna happen)_ year, but instead his brother seems to have been replaced by a monk. Dean is all but glued to Sam’s side, actually, and it’s making research difficult, although Sam doesn’t think that’s his brother's intent.

Dean keeps on touching him—more so than usual. He rests a hand on Sam’s knee as he drives, knocks their ankles together under the table at restaurants, slings a casual arm across his shoulders while they wait for their drinks at bars. When they walk down the street, Dean presses his hand against Sam’s lower back, over the scar that should have— _did_ —kill him. It’s like he has to constantly remind himself that Sam is still here: still alive. As crazy as it’s driving him, Sam doesn’t have the heart to tell his brother to stop.

Then, in Nebraska, while they’re gearing up for their confrontation with the six remaining Sins, Dean offers up yes number eight.

Sam pushes him away almost immediately, the taste of his brother making his lips tingle. “No,” he says.

The door’s open and Bobby is just down the hall, but Dean licks his lips and pushes forward again. Sam catches him by the shoulders before he can close the distance.

“I said _no_ , Dean,” he repeats. “You’re not playing the martyr again.”

Dean’s face tightens. “I’m not—”

“I interrupting something?” Bobby asks from the doorway. His eyes are wary beneath the brow of his hat, and he looks like he’s on the verge of retreating.

Sam makes himself let go of Dean and Dean steps away, lowering his head and striding back over to the pile of guns he was checking. Sam looks at Bobby and finds the man studiously inspecting his fingernails.

“We were just, uh,” he says, and Bobby grimaces.

“Doesn’t matter,” he breaks in before Sam can finish hanging himself. “Just wanted to let you know that we’re all set downstairs.”

“Oh. Okay. We’re, uh, almost done here.”

“Good,” Bobby answers. He looks at Dean, then at Sam, and then back at Dean again. He hesitates, and Sam is horrifyingly sure he’s gonna say something, but Bobby just gives his hat a tug and walks away.

Sam watches Dean reassemble their sawed off for a moment and then says, heavily, “Dean …”

“Forget it,” Dean says without looking up.

Chest aching, Sam nods. Then he realizes that Dean can’t see him, murmurs, “Okay,” and goes back to blessing the water.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Dean’s ninth yes comes in Ohio a week later, and Sam is so taken by surprise that he lets Dean kiss him for almost a minute before pushing his brother away.

“Damn it, Dean!” he shouts. His cock presses against his jeans, eager and stupid, and he clenches his hands into fists.

“What the hell is your problem?” Dean demands. He’s flushed: eyes flashing. He looks like he wants to punch something.

“ _You_ , Dean! Jesus, you can’t keep doing this!”

Dean’s jaw works but he doesn’t say anything.

“You think I don’t know what’s going on here?” Sam continues. “You think I don’t know that this is the rawhead all over again? Do you even know how that made me _feel_?”

“It’s not like that,” Dean protests.

“No?” Sam says. “Then what is it like? Huh? You tell me why my straight brother has suddenly decided he’s on board with the whole gay incest thing now that he only has a year to live. Go ahead.”

Dean stares at him and doesn’t say anything.

“That’s what I thought.” Sam rubs a hand over his face, suddenly exhausted. “You know what, Dean? Just—just give me some space, okay?”

“Is that what you want?” Dean asks.

Sam considers, hand still pressed against his eyes, and then answers. “It’s what I need.”

When lowers his hand again, Dean is gone.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

His brother stays away for almost a full week, and by the end of that time Sam is jittery and cursing himself for making such a dumb request. He’s on the verge of calling and begging Dean to come back when he looks up from his breakfast to find his brother standing next to his booth.

“This seat taken?” Dean asks.

He looks more relaxed than Sam has seen him in months. Before Sam has finished processing his presence, Dean is sliding into the opposite side of the booth and folding his hands on the table. It’s an oddly pious gesture, but it doesn’t last long because Dean unclasps his hands to steal a piece of Sam’s toast.

“Get your own,” Sam says, belated and a little too weakly, but the words feel right and Dean’s answering grin warms him.

“Planning on it,” he says, and then flags down Sam’s waitress with one raised eyebrow. He orders half the breakfast menu, an orange juice, a glass of milk, and a coffee.

“Hungry much?” Sam mutters when the waitress leaves.

Dean lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “Not like I need to worry about cholesterol anymore,” he says, and then winces. “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean—”

“No, it’s okay,” Sam interrupts, although it really isn’t. A silence falls over them, claustrophobic, and to break it Sam says, clumsily, “You know I’m going to save you, right?”

Dean taps his hand against the table and frowns. “I didn’t come here to talk about that,” he says, which isn’t an answer. It does imply that he came here to talk about _something_ , though, which is more than Sam expected, so he’s willing to let it go.

“Okay,” he says noncommittally, and waits.

Dean fidgets, mouth working like he’s chewing on his words to see how they taste, and the waitress returns with his breakfast before he actually manages to get anything out. Dean thanks her and then stares at the plates, frowning.

“We don’t need to talk if you don’t want to,” Sam offers.

“No, I do,” Dean says, lifting his gaze. “I—” He stops, grimaces, and then curses. “Fuck.”

Dean’s awkwardness must be catching because now Sam is shifting in his seat. “I mean it, man,” he says. “If you’re uncomfortable talking about whatever it is, then we don’t have to.”

“Tried that,” Dean answers with a wry half-smile. “Didn’t go so well.”

Sam has no idea what Dean is talking about and isn’t sure he wants to. But he makes himself sit silently and watch as his brother wrestles with himself.

Finally, Dean starts, “Look, you’ve—for a long time, you felt—about me, I mean.”

Oh God, _this_ talk.

What Sam wants to do is run like hell and hide in his motel room—or maybe in a convenient hole in the ground—but instead he says, “I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen.”

Dean ducks his head a little and then nods. “Yeah, that. I—well, I guess you know how I felt about that. Then, after the rawhead, when we—”

“Dean,” Sam says, choked, because he can’t hear his brother talk about that, not ever, and especially not in this sunlit, too ordinary diner.

“Anyway,” Dean continues, barreling forward, “It wasn’t, uh, the end of the world, and when Dad. I was kind of messed up, I guess, and we—”

“We handled it,” Sam interrupts. If this is what Dean considers a meaningful talk, then Sam is going to have to rethink his whole stance on communication being a good thing because it _sucks_. Gutting himself with a spork would probably be less painful.

“ _You_ handled it,” Dean corrects him. “You kept me from killing myself, Sam, cause that’s where I was headed and we both know it.”

Sam wants to protest and can’t. He thinks about the nameless asshole he caught fucking Dean with his hands around his brother’s neck. Dean probably wouldn’t ever have taken his own life, not as long as Sam was around, but he was definitely working up to having someone else do it for him.

“So, uh, that’s not really the point. The point is that I, uh, kinda couldn’t stop thinking about it. About that, uh, time in the room. And you—you were always there, man, just. I don’t know.”

Sam’s pretty confused on the subject himself by now, but he keeps his mouth shut.

“Anyway, I started, I don’t know, having these dreams, you remember, and they were sorta fucked up, and then I started having these _really_ fucked up thoughts, and I, uh, didn’t know what to do about it. Then you went and got yourself demon-napped, and killed, and Jesus Christ, Sam, I _couldn’t_. I couldn’t just let you go, okay? I love you and I couldn’t let you go.”

Sam’s throat is tight enough now that he can’t really breathe, but somehow he manages to choke out, “I know, Dean, but you shouldn’t have—”

“No,” Dean says. “No, Sam, you aren’t listen—oh, fuck it.” He leans forward over the table, grabs the front of Sam’s shirt and yanks him up into a kiss.

Sam has already pushed Dean away twice in as many weeks and he isn’t a saint: can’t do it again. Instead, he opens his mouth and thrusts his tongue against his brother’s. He can taste salt, but he didn’t need to taste his tears to know that he’s crying because he wants, oh God he _wants_ —

Dean breaks the kiss, but he doesn’t sit back and he doesn’t release Sam’s shirt. Leaning their foreheads together, he whispers, “I love you, Sam. Fuck, I love you so much it feels like I’m dying, and if you make fun of me for saying that, I swear to God Nair in your shampoo is gonna be the least of your worries.”

Sam’s insides are a squirming mess. He can’t sort out how he feels right now: can’t figure out anything except that it _hurts_.

“Shh,” Dean murmurs. “Hey, man, shh.” He releases his hold on Sam’s shirt and wipes his cheeks, first one side, then the other.

“Dean,” Sam manages.

“Right here,” Dean assures him, but the table is between them, continents wide. Sam shoves forward, unthinking, and Dean’s hands drop on his shoulders and push him back. “Woah,” he says.

“Dean,” Sam sobs again. He knows he’s making a scene and doesn’t care. He needs to feel his brother in his arms. He needs to know it’s real this time, this tenth yes, and he can’t do that from way over here.

“Is everything all right?” It’s the waitress’ voice, concerned and uncomfortable, and Sam tries uselessly to get a hold of himself. Dean answers her, smooth as always, and a moment later he has a hand on Sam’s elbow and is guiding him from the booth toward the door.

As soon as they’re safely outside, Sam spins around and pushes Dean up against the side of the building. He can’t really see what he’s doing through his tears, but he finds Dean’s lips on the second try and kisses him. They’re in the open and Dean has about fifty rules against PDA when it comes to _women_ , let alone his own _brother_ , but he kisses back anyway: one hand steady on Sam’s jaw while the other rubs up and down his back in a soothing, repetitive motion.

Sam doesn’t know how long it takes him to calm down enough to understand that the world isn’t going to end if he stops kissing Dean, but by the time the first fragments of rational thought finally seep in, his head is pounding and his eyes feel scratchy and raw. His chest still hurts, but the ache isn’t quite so sharp. Mostly, he just feels tired. He kisses Dean one last time, as deep as he can, and Dean makes a soft sound that’s all but drowned out by the beating of Sam’s heart and opens for it.

Dean _opens_ for him, yielding, and Sam’s hands tighten where they’re resting on his brother’s hips. He can’t—fuck, he didn’t know that you could be so happy and so frightened at once: so desperately full of joy and dread. Sam doesn’t get to have this. He doesn’t.

Suddenly terrified that this yes is going to rot and decay in his hands the way all those other offers did, he turns his head to the side—not far, just enough to break the kiss—and says, “Do you mean it? Because if you don’t, tell me now. I can’t—”

Dean kisses him again to shut him up and then takes one of Sam’s hands off his waist and presses it to his crotch. The hard line of Dean’s cock is obvious through his jeans.

“I mean it,” he promises.

Sam’s chest gives an agonizingly sharp clench—like his ribcage is snapping open—and then eases. “Took you long enough,” he whispers through the tears that are starting to fall again.

Dean’s hand brushes his cheek, soothing in its steadiness. “Yeah, but I’m here now.”

And he is. He really is.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

By the time they get back to Sam’s motel room, the world has lost that shocked sense of unreality that threw Sam so far off balance. His heart still feels like it’s a few beats away from short-circuiting, but he figures that isn’t going away anytime soon. Not with the taste of his brother strong in his mouth.

Dean follows him in and then closes the door. Sam stands in the middle of the room, looking at his hands, and then at the splotchy water stain on the rug, and then at Dean’s left knee.

“So,” Dean says.

“Right,” Sam says.

They stand there awkwardly for a few moments and then Sam can’t help it. He bursts out laughing.

“Glad to know you think this is so funny,” Dean grumps, but Sam can see a hint of a smile on his brother’s lips.

“Just—” he manages between breaths, “Us—we’ve—it isn’t like—we haven’t—done this—before.”

Dean moves away from the door, shrugging out of his jacket and dropping it on one of the beds. He sits down on the other one and looks up at Sam, waiting for him to get himself under control. Having those too green eyes focused on him turns out to be a pretty good antidote to Sam’s laughing jag and he quiets quickly. Warmth spreads from his gut down to his groin as he meets his brother’s gaze.

Dean regards him intently for a long moment and then says, “It isn’t the same.”

“No,” Sam agrees softly.

It’s both easier and harder, actually: being alone in the room with Dean and knowing that his brother wants the same thing he does. Knowing that they’re about to have sex. It leaves Sam feeling tentative and uncertain.

Dean is watching him expectantly, though, so Sam steels himself and steps forward. Dean spreads his thighs, making room, and Sam steps up between the denim v of his brother’s legs. His fingertips tingle with the need to touch, but he forces himself to stand there, feeding the tension with his stillness as he studies Dean.

Clearing his throat, Dean leans back on his elbows and tilts his head up so that he can look Sam in the eye. His shirt rides up with the motion, exposing a thin strip of skin along his belly: pale and toned. His cock is a thick bulge along the inner thigh of his right pant leg, and some of Sam’s anxiety drains out of him at the obvious sight of his brother's arousal.

“So, we gonna do this?” Dean drawls. He’s going for nonchalant, but his voice is a little too husky to pull it off: his cheeks a little too flushed.

In answer, Sam drops to his knees. Dean shifts, eyes widening, as Sam rests his hands on his thighs. Sam doesn’t give his brother a chance to get used to the idea: just leans forward and nuzzles at Dean’s cock through his jeans.

“Fuck,” Dean exhales. His thighs jump beneath Sam’s hands.

Shifting up slightly, Sam opens his mouth and gently bites down on that hard bulge. Dean’s legs fall open a little wider as he tilts his hips up, breath coming fast and ragged. Mouthing his way along the length of his brother’s cock, Sam finds the head and then goes to work, letting his saliva soak into the worn denim as he kneads Dean’s trembling thigh muscles.

Sam is just getting into it when his brother tangles a hand in his hair and pulls his head up. He trails his gaze up the length of Dean’s body to find his brother staring at him with an expression Sam has never seen before. Dean’s eyes are soft and almost dazed. He’s looking at Sam as though he has never really seen him before: as though Sam is something precious and wonderful and bewildering. Sam's pretty sure that his brother doesn’t have the faintest idea how open his face is right now.

Then Dean blinks and his gaze sharpens. “Strip,” he says. “Now.”

Sam’s, “You too,” comes out shakily—he’s still staggered by the depth of emotion he just saw in his brother’s eyes—but Dean doesn’t seem to notice. He just nods and starts unbuttoning his shirt. Standing up, Sam moves back a few steps to give himself some room to maneuver and then goes to work on his own clothes.

They don’t make it a thing—they’re both too new at this, and a shade too uncertain—but Sam can feel Dean’s eyes on him as he unbuckles his belt. From the corner of his own eyes, he can see his brother stripping with the same steady, methodical speed he uses when cleaning their guns, and that mental association—Dean and gunpowder, and oil—is way more erotic than it should be.

Sam tilts his body to the side as he pushes his pants and boxers down, concealing his erection from his brother’s eyes. It’s stupid—Dean knows the effect he has on Sam: he’s felt it before in very real ways—but something has changed in the room now that Sam is naked. He hears Dean’s jeans hit the floor in a clump and, swallowing thickly, corrects himself: now that they’re both naked.

Some elusive, intangible element has fallen out of place—or maybe in—and Sam can’t manage to lift his eyes from the floor, let alone turn around and face his brother. He feels exposed, skin and soul, and as he thinks again of that reverent cast to his brother’s gaze, he hunches his shoulders a little.

The way Dean looked at him, so _worshipful_ … God, there isn’t enough room in here for him and Dean and their tangled, too intense emotions. Sam is dwarfed by all that need and love: is left feeling vulnerable and shy and more than a little nervous. If they screw up this time, it isn’t going to be just disastrous but cataclysmic.

Sam hears his brother coming toward him and tenses.

“Hey,” Dean murmurs, sliding one hand along Sam’s right shoulder. “Look at me.”

Sam can’t tell if the ache in his chest is want or dread. “I can’t,” he whispers.

Dean’s hand curls around his bicep, inexorable. “Come on, man. Don’t leave me hanging.”

The unspoken _'please'_ hooks into Sam’s skin and drags him around. Flushed, he keeps his eyes steadfastly on the floor.

“Look at me,” Dean says again.

When Sam continues to hesitate, Dean’s hands cup his face, gentle, and lift his head for him. As Dean skims his right thumb over Sam's cheekbone in a brief caress, he smiles: warm and affectionate.

“You’re beautiful, you know that?”

Sam’s throat burns and his eyes water alarmingly. “I’m not,” he protests. “Not like you.” He expects Dean to laugh it off the way he normally does— _well, you can’t have the brains and the beauty, Sammy_ —but instead Dean kisses him, light as snowfall.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “You are.” He kisses Sam again, deeper this time, and when they come apart he says, “Touch me.”

God, Sam wants to. His chest aches with how much he wants to. But his hands continue to hang limply by his side. “I—Dean, I—”

“You can,” Dean urges. His own hands slide from Sam’s face to his chest, and then down to his stomach. “C’mon, Sammy. Touch me.”

Gripping Sam’s cock, he drags his hand down to the base and then back up to the tip. Sam moans. His hands stutter forward a few inches and then stop.

Dean adjusts his grip and tilts Sam’s cock down. The sensitive head brushes against something warm and impossibly soft— _Dean’s cock_ —and Dean steps closer: opens his hand so that he can hold both of them together. Sam reels with the sensation and drops a hand on his brother's shoulder. He has to, just to keep himself from falling.

You feel that?” Dean asks, nudging Sam’s head to one side and nipping at his neck. His hand strokes their cocks with agonizing slowness. “I want this, Sam. I want _you_. You can touch me. It’s okay.”

Sam caves. Despite his fear and his absurd shyness, his other hand creeps forward to slide around Dean’s hip and cup his ass. It’s a light, tentative touch, but it drives a low, honest moan from his brother. Encouraged, Sam grips a handful of flesh and squeezes.

“Shit,” Dean blurts, and Sam moves his right hand down to caress his brother’s other cheek.

“You like that?” he asks, rubbing his hands across his brother’s ass.

Dean makes a choked noise and rests his forehead on Sam’s shoulder. His left hand is bruisingly tight on Sam’s hip, but the hand he was stroking their cocks with has gone lax. He pushes his ass back into Sam’s hands.

“Got a thing for my hands, Dean?” Sam whispers into his brother’s temple as he takes one muscular cheek in each hand and pulls them apart.

Dean chokes out a couple of mostly muffled words that Sam translates as, “fucking huge,” and shudders. Sam wonders if he could make Dean come just like this: just from the feel of Sam's hands on his skin. The idea has a lot of appeal—the fact that Dean has a kink for his _hands_ is sexy as hell—but now that he has relocated his confidence, Sam has more immediate urges to take care of. He squeezes one last time and then forces himself to let go, chest glowing at Dean’s grunt of protest.

“Get on the bed,” he orders.

Without a hint of hesitation, Dean says, “Lube’s in my back pocket.” Then, after giving their cocks one final pull, he steps back and obeys.

It takes Sam almost a minute to get the lube—Dean really should’ve dug it out before he stripped, although Sam guesses that neither of them was thinking clearly at that point. When he finally emerges from the inside-out, wadded up denim and looks at the bed, he promptly drops the lube again.

Dean is lying on his back: left leg sprawled out and right foot flat on the bed while he fondles his balls. He’s watching Sam through half-closed eyes, lips parted and wet. The image is so erotic that Sam’s hips give an unconscious twitch that fucks his cock forward through thin air.

“Holy shit,” he says.

Dean smirks at him, parting his legs and moving his hand from his balls to his cock. “See something you like?”

Something in the question smacks of challenge, and Sam can’t help responding. He bends down quickly to retrieve the lube—no one’s ever going to look sexy bending over—and then shoots Dean a grin of his own. He lets all of his filthiest fantasies show in his eyes: all the things he’s going to do with Dean now that he has him.

Dean’s cocky expression slips a little.

“Hands over your head,” Sam says, uncapping the lube. He isn’t sure what he’s doing—isn’t sure Dean’s going to play this game with him—but Dean doesn’t laugh or scowl. He just looks uncertain.

“Don’t make me tell you twice,” Sam warns, coming to stand at the foot of the bed.

Dean rolls his eyes in an exaggerated manner, but he does it: lifting his hands up above his head and crossing them at the wrist. At the sight of his brother surrendering control—something he normally clings to with a death grip—Sam’s breath comes faster.

“Legs up and apart,” he orders, and this time his brother obeys instantly. Dean's cock is swollen, swaying slightly with his breaths, but all Sam has eyes for right now is the shadowed place between his brother’s legs. God, Dean looks so tiny: so tight. Although Sam knows that it isn’t, it seems impossible that his brother will be able to stretch wide enough to let him in. His groin gives a sharp, demanding ache—sense memory—and he crawls onto the bed between his brother’s legs.

“Sam?” Dean asks.

Sam doesn’t know what the question is, but that’s okay because he can’t remember how to speak right now anyway. Dropping the lube on the mattress, he slides his hands beneath his brother’s ass and tilts him up.

“Sammy,” Dean says again, nervous.

In response, Sam hunches down, shouldering beneath his brother’s thighs, and then licks a slow, lingering path from Dean’s entrance up to his balls.

“Jesus!” Dean shouts, jerking. “Fucking warn a guy, will yo—ungh.”

Smirking, Sam laps at Dean’s pucker again. Dean squirms, but from the noises he’s making it’s a _good_ squirming, so Sam tightens his grip and holds him still. When he presses his mouth more firmly against that tiny opening, he’s almost overwhelmed by the smell of musk and sweat and sex. The scent of his brother is warm in Sam’s mouth as he parts his lips and pushes his tongue forward. Dean makes a strangled, high-pitched sound and his body jerks violently enough that Sam almost loses his grip.

Lifting his head far enough to speak, Sam demands, “Hold still.”

“You … hold still,” Dean pants back, as if that makes any sense, and then lets out another cry as Sam licks in again.

This time, Sam is ready for his brother’s reaction, and he continues to fuck his tongue in and out of Dean’s hole as Dean writhes in his grasp. He could very easily get addicted to this: to leaving Dean so strung out that, for once, he has no other option but to take what Sam is offering. He thrusts his tongue into Dean until he can tell that his brother adjusting to the sensation and then switches to sucking on the ring of sensitive skin around Dean’s opening.

“Sam,” Dean pants. “Sammy.”

“Mmm,” Sam hums without pausing, and gets another uncontrollable jerk of his brother’s hips in response. That shuts Dean up again, though, and Sam needs the audible confirmation that his brother is still with him. Pulling off, he rasps, “Talk to me, Dean. Tell me how it feels.”

“Good,” Dean grunts, and then gasps as Sam licks him again. “God, you know it does. F-feels fucking aw— _Jesus_ —a-awesome.”

The sound of Dean’s voice is going straight to Sam’s dick and he nuzzles closer, tongue lapping hungrily into his brother.

“Christ,” Dean groans, “So fuckin’ wet.”

 _I’ll give you wet_ , Sam thinks, and withdraws his tongue. Taking a moment to let some moisture build up in his mouth, he prods at his brother’s entrance with lips and nose and, with a bit of maneuvering, the teasing tip of one finger. Then, after ensuring that he has a firm grip on Dean’s thighs, he parts his lips and plunges his saliva-slicked tongue back inside of his brother. He doesn’t know how to classify the noise Dean makes in response to that aside from _fucking hot_ , so he does it again, and then sets about to opening Dean up as best as he can using just his mouth.

By the time he’s done, Dean’s opening is loose and soaked and quivering for him like a girl’s cunt. Sam’s jaw aches and his dick is pretty much screaming at him to get the show on the road, but he’s too smug to care. When he lowers Dean back down on the bed, his brother looks dazed. Sweat coats Dean's chest and stomach in a light sheen, tempting, and Sam can’t help leaning forward and licking around his bellybutton.

“Ngh,” Dean says, rolling his hips helplessly.

Grinning, Sam props himself up on his left hand and toys the fingers of his right against his brother’s entrance. “You still with me?”

Dean blinks and then focuses with evident difficulty. “Fucking tease,” he mutters. He’s too winded to give the accusation any real kind of vehemence.

“It isn’t teasing if I follow through,” Sam tells him, and then presses a single finger forward.

Dean’s pucker is wet enough and open enough that Sam’s finger breaches him easily, but he’s still painfully tight and dry deeper inside, where Sam’s tongue wasn’t long enough to reach. Sam has to edge his finger back a little, slicking it, before pushing forward. This time he manages to press in up to his knuckle, and Dean lets out a choked swear.

“Language, baby,” Sam says. The endearment falls off his tongue accidentally as he feels around for the place he wants, but now that it’s out there he isn’t going to take it back.

“Oh, fuck you, Sa—aaahfuck!”

 _Bingo,_ Sam thinks and rubs again. Dean’s dick, still blood-thick and hard, beads precome under the stimulation. Sam strokes harder and the bead becomes a glistening trickle. Lowering his head, Sam laps gently at the leaking head and Dean moans like it hurts. His hips start to move, first pushing up in an attempt to get more of Sam’s mouth and then shoving back down for his finger.

The strong, salt-musky taste of Dean makes Sam’s tongue tingle and his heart flutters frantically in his chest. Dean isn’t just beautiful, lying there so needy and desperate: he’s fucking _gorgeous_. Sam feels like he’s drowning, held down by the weight of his own desire. He’s helpless to do anything other than keep Dean caught there, straining like a butterfly half-smothered by honey. Sinking deeper into his own hunger, Sam torments his brother with finger and tongue until Dean is honest to God sobbing.

“Please,” Dean begs. “Oh f-fuck, c’mon, pleh—ngh—p-please, Sammy.”

Somehow, Sam scrapes together enough brain cells to understand that he’s verging on cruel, and without another second of hesitation he opens wide and lowers his mouth down onto Dean’s cock. He isn’t even halfway down when Dean comes with a hoarse yell, and he hastily pulls back a little, keeping just the twitching tip of his brother’s cock between his lips so that he can taste everything—can taste _Dean_ —before he swallows.

When his orgasm releases him, Dean goes completely limp. He lies there, eyes vague and unfocused, and doesn’t rouse even when Sam lubes up three fingers and works them inside of him. By the time Sam’s fingers are sliding nice and sloppily in and out, though, Dean’s breath is coming fast again. His hands are still above his head, gripping the headboard tightly, and he’s watching Sam with a terrifying mixture of awe and fear and love on his face. Carefully pulling his fingers free, Sam crawls up his brother’s body and catches Dean’s parted lips in a kiss.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Sam promises. “And I’m not going to leave you.”

Then, because he knows Dean has trouble with words sometimes, he kisses his brother again. He makes the press of their lips a promise: the tangle of their tongues a vow. He kisses Dean until he can tell Dean understands him and then edges his body between his brother’s splayed legs.

Dean's thighs automatically spread further for him and the movement lines Sam up perfectly. His cock prods at that open, prepared place between his brother’s legs and Dean gasps into his mouth. Dean’s hips twitch, pushing down and briefly enveloping the head of Sam’s cock in heat before relaxing back again. Sam clutches at his brother’s raised left arm and at Dean’s right hip as a wave of white light passes through him.

“Again,” he manages when he finds his voice. “Do that again.”

Shutting his eyes, Dean swallows and complies. This time, Sam chases the heat when it starts to recede: pushing into tight, pulsing warmth and shocking Dean’s eyes back open. Dean is staggeringly, painfully open as Sam enters him: all the masks and layers that he normally wears like a second skin either pulled back or shredded. His mouth has gone thin and strained. His skin is pale enough that the smatter of freckles across the bridge of his nose is sun burnt-obvious. The pupils of Dean’s eyes are blown wide: ringed by green irises that have gone an unearthly, translucent shade in the face of so much need and heat and desire.

Sam can see his own devastation reflected in his brother’s gaze—sees a mirror of the consuming, ravenous love that has been banding his own heart for eight years—and he tips over, letting his full weight fall on top of his brother and locking their mouths together.

Dean’s hands drop down from the headboard and he wraps one in Sam’s hair and cups Sam’s ass with the other, pulling him closer. Sam kisses his brother desperately, lips and teeth and tongue, until it gets to be too much and he has to turn his head to the side and work his way along Dean’s jaw and down to his neck instead.

He bites down on a patch of skin hard enough to leave a mark and Dean hisses. Sam half-expects his brother to pull away, but instead Dean drops the hand that was in Sam’s hair to his shoulder and tilts his head to give Sam better access. The room spins wildly as Sam sucks on his mouthful of flesh, driven by the need to mark Dean: to ensure that this spot will be purple and sore for days. Sam works at his brother's neck until he has to breathe or pass out and then pulls off, hauling in a quick breath before trailing his tongue over the darkening bruise.

Dean hisses again, shifting beneath Sam and inadvertently fucking himself down onto Sam’s cock. His hiss morphs into a moan, and the next move is deliberate.

Jesus.

“You ready?” Sam gasps out, like his brother isn’t giving him about a hundred green lights with the way his hips are moving, and the way Dean’s cock is filling again where it’s trapped between them.

“Fuck me,” Dean pants. “C’mon, Sam, _move_.”

Sam does—a strong snap of his own hips—and Dean shouts and digs his fingers into Sam’s shoulder. Impossibly, he spreads his thighs even wider. His hand clenches on Sam’s ass, trying to get him to move faster: his hips tilt up in an effort to take Sam deeper.

“Fuck, _Dean_ ,” Sam moans, and starts giving his brother what they both want.

If he lets himself think about what he’s doing— _Dean, that’s Dean under me:_ around _me_ —Sam is going to finish before they even get started, so he buries himself in the sensations instead. He slides in and out of his brother—hot and moist and still wonderfully tight, despite all the prep—while Dean’s hands run all over him, hungry. Dean’s skin fills his mouth; Dean’s whimpers and shouts and moans fill his ears.

Eventually, it occurs to Sam that Dean is saying something—that he’s whispering, “Sam,” and “love you,” like a prayer as his breath is punched out with every one of Sam’s thrusts—and that’s what makes him lose it.

Fumbling a hand between them, Sam jerks at his brother’s cock once, twice, and then they’re _both_ coming, and the pleasure is so intense that it’s painful, and Sam whites out.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When he comes around again, he’s still draped on top of Dean and his brother is running one hand through his hair. Dean’s cock is soft where it’s caught between them: sticky with semen. Sam shifts and feels his own exhausted cock move where it’s still buried inside of Dean. A wave of something that almost feels like a second orgasm surges through him and then subsides.

“Hey,” he says thickly.

“Hey,” Dean answers, and then, “I, uh, hate to break the mood, but if you don’t pull out soon, it’s probably gonna hurt.”

Sam lifts his head at that, a question in his eyes, because yes, Dean’s right, but he shouldn’t know that unless he’s been playing this side of the fence more than Sam knows.

Dean meets his gaze and understands immediately what Sam’s asking. “Just you,” he says. Then, licking his lips, he adds, “And that, uh, one other time. I just did some research.”

Sam can’t think about ‘that one other time’ right now, so he focuses on the other half of his brother’s statement instead. “You did research,” he repeats. “On gay sex.”

Dean scowls, as though Sam can’t see the embarrassed blush on his cheeks: the _loveyouwantyouneedyou_ in his eyes. Sam has a feeling that his brother doesn’t know that his walls are still down. He suspects that maybe those thorny defenses have crumbled for good, whether Dean wanted them to or not, and the shadow of Dean’s fling with self-destruction lifts in the face of Sam’s relief.

“Wasn’t gonna go into this thing half-cocked, dude,” Dean announces, trying to sound matter-of-fact and superior. The façade is spoiled by the tender way his fingers are still carding through Sam’s hair.

Sam looks down at his brother, who is open and sated and _happy_ , and can’t help it. “Half-cocked,” he says, and snickers.

Dean tries to look annoyed, but it’s only a few seconds before he’s grinning too. “Yeah, yeah. Now get your half-cock out of my ass.”

“Little more than ‘half’,” Sam shoots back, but he lifts up far enough for his cock to slip free.

Dean winces at the sensation and shifts his hips. “Yeah, okay: point.”

Sam moves a little to the side and resettles, half beside and half on top of his brother. He rests his head on Dean’s shoulder and, after a little maneuvering on Dean’s part, has his brother’s right arm wrapped around his shoulders. Dean’s left hand strokes briefly down Sam’s upper arm and then sinks into his hair again.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence, Dean chuckles.

“What’s so funny?” Sam asks, and then, because he can, kisses Dean’s chest.

“Dude, you totally passed out,” Dean crows. “I’m, like, a sex god.”

Sam doesn’t actually have a come back for that, so he mutters, “You’re _something_ ,” and then moves his arm up so that his hand is resting over the graceful curve of Dean’s left shoulder. Dean is right handed, but he always seems to lead with this side, with the left, and so this is the shoulder that’s thick with scar tissue. Sam feels the ghosts of old wounds against his palm—three raised lines from a black dog’s claws; slick burn scar from Pa Bender’s poker; seven, uneven dimples from a revenant’s teeth; mass of thickened skin first from Meg’s bullet and then from Sam’s thumb.

Suddenly, Dean seems very fragile, and vulnerable, and Sam remembers that, unless he stumbles across a miracle, they have less than a year left. Sorrow threatens to choke him and he hates it. He hates that, even now, after everything they’ve sacrificed—after everything _Dean_ has sacrificed—they aren’t allowed a little peace.

“I meant it,” he says softly, and strokes his thumb over the scars onto the smooth, unmarred skin of Dean’s clavicle.

Dean’s fingers press more firmly, sliding through Sam’s hair to rub against his scalp. “Meant what?” he asks. His lips brush Sam’s hair when he speaks.

“I won’t hurt you, and I’m not leaving.”

Dean sighs his usual annoyance at Sam’s ‘care and share’ habits, but doesn’t say anything.

“But you aren’t leaving either, Dean,” Sam continues, relentless. “Neither of us is going anywhere. I’m going to save you.”

Dean’s fingers still. “Sam,” he starts on a reluctant exhale.

“I’m going to save you,” Sam insists. “And you’re going to let me.”

Dean doesn’t respond, but for once Sam feels no urge to push. He knows that, if he waits, the silence will force his brother to answer. If Dean needs to take some time to consider, then that’s okay. It’s more than okay, actually, because this is the most important answer that Dean will ever give him, and Sam doesn’t know what he’ll do if his brother tells him no this time. He can’t lose this, he _can’t_ , but he can’t save Dean unless Dean wants to be saved.

Finally, what feels like years later, Dean says, hoarsely, “Yeah.”

Sam tilts his head up and kisses the yes from his brother’s lips. He swallows it down and it tastes like a promise. It tastes like forever.

Hell can try and take Dean if it wants, but Dean is Sam's now, and Sam's not letting him go. If those black-eyed sons of bitches want his brother, then they're going to have a war on their hands. And Sam?

Sam's going to win.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Monday, June 11th, 2007, is the first day that Sam wakes up next to his brother. It’s the first day that Dean offers him a lazy smile and kisses him good morning.

 _One,_ Sam thinks. _One going on eternity and counting._

And he kisses Dean back.


End file.
